Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Tuesday, March 03, 2009 3:22:38 PM
David Brooks (A Moderate Manifesto) seems genuinely surprised that President Obama is doing what he promised to do—the angst is palpable. Brooks writes:
There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.
…. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.
The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide.
Brooks, a self-described “conservative moderate,” list some of the Obama outrages: his attack based on class divide; his proposals to “concentrate power in Washington;” his “zooming spending as a share of GDP.”
And then he turns to his call—for moderates to chart a middle course, a course between Obama and the followers of Rush Limbaugh. This is a particularly curious proposal because his first proposal is based on his belief “in limited but energetic government.” His articulation of the moderates task covers points endorsed, dare I say, by 99% of Rush’s listeners. Perhaps if he did not work for the NY Times, Mr. Brooks would feel more sanguine about adopting allies wherever they are to be found, allies that he wouldn’t need to utter the compulsory liberal slur against.
Instead, perhaps he needs to identify those areas where he agrees with conservatives to his right, accept that politics is the art of the possible, and align himself with others. For example, there are no Republicans, of any note, moderate or conservative, that want to see the D.C. voucher program gutted, as it will be under the current proposal.