I'm not with you on this one. Typical Brooks hogwash. Sounds grand but falls apart under scrutiny. Yes fancy computer models don't predict mob behavior very well. But they do great at predicting many other aspects of human behavior, such as subway usage, shopping patterns, and future voting results. Also, when I read Silver he's constantly pointing out the limitations of his models and assumptions. Brooks on the other hand reaches much further and concedes much less.
Worth a bump, no? This election was a massive David Brooks failure. Aside from being dull and self important and wrong, which is a dire combination, Brooks no longer has any constituency. The right dropped him long ago for being moderate, the left knows that he's a putz, and now moderates realize that he's not deep and insightful, he's just an upscale Rush -- a windbag who makes stuff up rather than work with the data. So who will listen?
He's just another tool like Andrew Sullivan - he's more interested in being the liberals' conservative because it's such a sweet spot from a marketing perspective. If he was just another moderate Democrat no one would pay attention to him precisely because he is so trite and boring. The Times is a perfect vehicle for him, because it lets them claim a Republican editorial voice without actually straining most of their readership's good graces. Frum is probably moving that way, but I at least give him credit in that he used to be a true movement conservative; he's got the cred Brooks can never claim. Brooks just looks for what he assumes is the middle ground, stakes his claim to it and claims it's what represents the best of America. He's basically the late election Mitt Romney of pundits.
As a hardcore Reep said contemptuously of Peggy Noonan, "She's a New York Republican." That's like being a wet Tory.
Now I feel like I should have watched PBS last night. Then I'd be able to explain to you why your assessment is wrong. I mean, I know David Brooks has some talent for obscuring his stupidity, but it's always there ...
Brooks has been reeling since Obama's election, and Jonathan Chait puts him out for the count. As Chait demonstrates, the man who positions himself as being above party labels is in fact a party hack. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/david-brooks-now-totally-pathological.html
Classic Brooks, always seeking to misrepresent Obama as a lefty so that he can insert himself in the middle between the intransigent right and the intransigent left. Brooks says that Obama needs a Bob Rubin type in his administration so that Obama will cut deals and be reasonable, as Clinton was. Ezra Klein points out Rubin's current view is to the left of Obama's proposal. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...have-a-plan-a-conversation-with-david-brooks/
Jonathan Chait had a good take on this... http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/david-brooks-obama-plan-birther.html
I wrote before that this was about Brooks trying to maintain the center ... but now I'm not so sure. It might simply be that he is after all a Republican. He can praise Bill Clinton after the fact, but that's different than praising a Democrat while he's in office. For all his nonpartisan positioning, Brooks might well be just another partisan who can't speak well of the other party. He can criticize his own, yes. But that doesn't make him a true centrist.
That's more a reflection of the Republicans moving further and further right. He can't say complementary things about the Democrats because by his own world view, they're not "in the middle" - they can't be, because they oppose the Republicans. Therefore, he can never say anything good about them, because the optimal point of agreement is exactly between the Republican and Democrat position, regardless of how far to the right the Republicans move. It's just like the deal Obama proposed in 2011 - Brooks at the time thought it wasn't ideal, but now is screaming that the Republicans should have taken it because now it looks to be more in the middle.
When dealing with Brooks, the GOP's optimal tactic is to move FAR right. The further it goes, the more that Brooks will scramble to the right in pursuit.
A walk down memory lane. Ten years ago today, David Brooks wrote this... http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/358pyodq.asp#
Yes David, events will indeed show. [Nice dunk by Nate after I left, Mr. Signori. Only good things happen to the Bulls if I leave the stadium.]
Well at least the country did not slide to civil war, not yet at least (other than the ethnic cleansing that occurred the years right after the war).
... a deserved bump ... The facts vs. David Brooks: Startling inaccuracies raise questions about his latest book -- David Zweig, Salon Let's get real: he basically falsified data. Did he do that out of confusion or stupidity? I have said the guy is a pure dope. But I doubt he didn't know what he was doing with that repeated anecdote. But then somebody pointed out the error, and he effectively doubled down! That's knowing. That's intentional. Brooks is a pseudo-intellectual and a fraud. His continued influence should be an embarrassment to our media. If only the media was capable of embarrassment.
I recorded a video for work. One of the viewer comments was, "He appears to be channeling David Brooks." Not for content, but it seems that I look and talk like him. Dang.