The Delusions and Fears of David Brooks

This is a piece I wrote in 2008, just after McCain chose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate, and may serve as one more warning against taking this woman's delusional self-identification as an intelligent maverick as anything more than bad fiction. It is also a rather scary look at the point of view of one of the more sane neo-conservatives on the block today.

David Brooks Op-Ed of Sept. 1, 2008
Good old David Brooks, I am not sure that he can help himself. In his Op-Ed in the NYT today (Sept. 1, 2003) he employs his infinite wisdom to inform those of us who cannot think for ourselves what the Palin pick says about John McCain and his candidacy. Actually, to be fair, he is one of the more sane of the neo-cons, and even when he is offensive, he does not approach such intellectual midgets as Ann Coulter: one of the very few non-administration justifications I can come up with for the death penalty. Nevertheless, he was working hard to sale us a bill of goods in his column today (see link). Let us examine the plethora of ways in which Brooks is just flat deluded about the true motivation behind this choice. We can go even further and apologize in advance for making him very uncomfortable by shredding the worn-out quick labels Brooks is holding to so tenaciously in order not to make himself too uncomfortable. After all, he may find himself the target of a "special rendition", if McCain does not win, given his recent rude treatment of Obama in a similarly unbalanced evaluation.

We may nevertheless commend him for this much: David Brooks remains wedded to his sacred tactical principles, namely, to summit the heights of GOP orthodoxy in training for the monumental task of convincing the American people that their only hope is more of the same, while tossing in the obligatory two or three lines of journalistically mandated objectivity. Be serious, do you really think that "Blowhard" Limbaugh really has some fundamental insight that the Democrats (D) lack? Democrats are fully aware that McCain is not another Bush; after all, the odds of having the two worst Presidents in the history of the US back to back are, thankfully, astronomical. Such D comparisons are tried and true examples of tactics of which you, Mr.Brooks, are an exemplary practitioner: they are called POLITICS. In fact, if I may address you political hack to political hack, David, I wish to suggest to you that your column today is of the very same species and genus. I can only suggest that an evaluation of the facts shows that your political gamesmanship took the day off. Indeed, today's tactical maneuver will be far less likely to draw converts for McCain than was the Rove led Bush team was by making push calls asking those "polled" such questions as, "Would your view of John McCain change, if you knew that he had two black children?" (He does: those he and wife, Cindy, adopted from Indonesia.) This effectively killed McCain's chances for a 2000 White House big. It is rather easy to understand that the percentage so coveted by Sen. McCain is of a much different nature than that of his alignment with W, which is not to say that I renounce the my argument regarding the possibility of McCain being equally inept as his predecessor.


Agreed: McCain did meet the rarest of political animals when he had his single meeting with Palin. The woman he met was a Republican (R) with no record whatsoever, and thus not tarnished by the abysmal past eight years of R hubris, corruption, lies, and general organizational ineptitude. Perhaps a qualification is in order here; this is the person he believed himself to have met, or that David Brooks believes McCain believes himself to have met. After all, Brooks states unequivocally that Palin made Ted Stevens her mortal enemy. Perhaps I owe Dave a debt of gratitude for his helping me to understand that “mortal enemy” was the official title of Ms.Palin when she served as the Director of the 527 organization of recently indicted Senator Ted Stevens—though her web-site has been scrubbed so as to eliminate Alaska’s senior Senator’s ringing endorsement of her.


I suppose that we can agree with Mr. Brooks that since the most politically threatening scandal of the current R ticket is her involvement in "Troopergate", and since there has only been one other politician in recent memory to have been entangled in a “Troopergate” scandal, that she still belongs in the “rare animal” category. His argument is all the more sound in that no one involved in her “Troopergate” scandal has maintained that she has a mole on her privates and that it was not announced at an American Enterprise gathering by a well-paid young lady. Unfortunately, few will bother to examine the documents surrounding this less than torrid affair,because, in fact, there is the real possibility for scandal lurking here. Gov. Palin seems to have the same allergic reaction to inconvenient facts as does the current administration.


To take a short digression the final reaction of her involvement with this scandal, which has yet to have been reported upon properly, is likely to be widespread revulsion, which, of course, weakens Brooks’ “rare animal” premise. Indeed, the Anchorage Daily News has 20 or so PDFs on its site—part of the 282 page report that resulted from the year long investigation into her former brother-in-law, Investigator Mike Wooten—which reveal the character of Gov. Palin in a singularly shocking fashion. Allow me to put it this way, if this is the way that fundamentalist’s practice Christian Charity, God save us from those who take their religion less seriously.


Alas, I am fairly certain that a combination of hyper apathy on the one hand, and the willful ignorance of the true believers, on the other, will prevent the public from coming to understand just how cutthroat she truly is. Numerous reports that have surfaced today regarding her various power plays. For example as mayor of Wassila she was forced to hire a city administrator because of a spate of early firings, which led to a recall campaign. What’s more disturbing, she attempted to fire Wassila’s city librarian, because the librarian refused to remove certain books from the shelves that the Mayor found to be offensive. Ultimately, the town rallied around this brave librarian, reacting against the mayor. Censorship is about as offensive as it gets, as far as I am concerned. I am pretty sure that I understand what the phrase “public service versus narrow self-interest” means. I am just as certain that the actions elaborated above were not motivated by a concern for public service. Moreover, as I suggested above, a careful evaluation of the documents in the Wooten case will leave no reasonable person with any doubt whatsoever as to the lengths to which she will go to enforce her narrow self-interest.


As to her political philosophy: are you, David, as unfamiliar with Palin as McCain seems to be? She opposes abortion in ALL cases, including rape and incest, going so far as to claim that she would not allow her daughter to have an abortion, if she were raped (Now, that is what I call a compassionate mother.); she is an advocate of teaching creationism in schools; as we have already seen, she is certainly not opposed to active government participation in censorship or the elimination of recalcitrant officials, in her capacity as an executive branch official, if a mayor who is compelled to hire a city administrator can be said to be an executive; she denies that global warming is a catastrophe to which "man" has contributed, which implies that there is nothing that we are required to do to impede this pesky problem; and, oddity of all oddities for a VP candidate, for one who may be in a position to act as the Commander and Chief of our Armed Services, she is married to a man who belonged to the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) as late as 2002. This "party" would like to break away from the silly U.S. After 2002, and what was more than likely a come to Jesus meeting with Sarah and her staff he registered him self as “undeclared.” What’s more, in spite of the McCain campaign’s vociferous denials—for certainly McCain, as intimately as he knows his running-mate and as thoroughly as her vetting process was, knows more about where Sarah Palin has spent her time over the last 15 years than those in her physical presence—multiple members of the AIP have reported that she attended their 1994 convention. Perhaps AIP member Lynette Park put it most eloquently when she quipped, “This is like a cat covering crap in its litter box.”


I must admit to being even more significantly suspicious that McCain met “an American politician who sees the world as he does. Come on David, you work for the paper of record. We have all heard the medical school maxim that the most straightforward explanation of an illness is generally the correct one, which is famously pounded home by some sagely medical professor saying, “If you hear hoofs, do not assume that there is a party of zebra trotting through the hospital.” David Brooks would have us believe that McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate because he looked into her eyes, studied the same 70 question vetting sheet that every candidate for that position was compelled to answer, and found his philosophical soul-mate. He would have been more likely to have thought that the ramblings of the woman with the foreign policy experience consisting of being able to see Russia from Alaska--we presume she means prior to 1991- were those of a braying zebra, than a sensible elephant.


To recall ourselves to the very beginning of this piece, McCain chose Palin so as to attract an entirely different type of percentage than that of is coincidence for voting the Bush line. He is seeking to increase, exponentially, infinitely even, of the Theocon vote by this choice of running mate. Sarah Palin is the poster child for the Evangelical wing of the R party, whose support McCain desperately needs and did not begin to receive until he announced his “big surprise”, which I would imagine is turning out to be somewhat more surprising than the R’s nominee ever imagined. Indeed, the fallout over the vetting of Gov. Palin began early and intensified as today progressed, as testified to by the fact that the vetting issue was the subject of one of the feature articles in The New York Times’ afternoon political update e-mail. Those in charge of vetting Palin, if they existed in any other than a hypothetical fashion, could not even bother to do an archive search of Palin’s hometown newspaper, or so staffers at the paper report.


There is not a damn thing “maverick” or “reformist” about McCain these days it seems. Unless one counts the restrictions placed on the press on the formerly famous full-access “Straight Talk Express” as a reform. As I understand it, members of the press corps embedded with McCain have come up with a clever new name to reflect the realities on the ground. I am sorry, David; the so-called “maverick” of the GOP has chosen as his running mate just the sort of hyper-activist and reportedly hypocritical Theocon, which keeps the father of R mavericks, Barry Goldwater, spinning in his grave. (See, for example, Victor Gold’s scathing critique of the transformation of his idol’s party in his 2007 book, Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Consciousness Destroyed the GOP. What’s more, only the most fantastically deluded R can accuse Gold of the sin of all of those who have the temerity to question their self-righteous agenda, namely that of being a “Liberal”: the catch-all phrase that I have yet to have seen clearly defined by anyone in the R party. There is no surprise in the fact that this group is finally breaking for the nominee. The notion that she was chosen to attract disaffected Hillary supporters is one of the less sophisticated jokes of the political season. Indeed, polls are showing that those who were even considering McCain as a potential alternative to the non-Hillary D ticked, now consider him in somewhat more pejorative language. There will never be such a thing as a Hillary-McCainite; except for some big rain maker who wanted his picture in the paper today, but HE does not count.


Again, give me a break, it does not exactly take a reformer to oppose the scandal ravaged Alaskan GOP. Thus far 11 state GOP lawmakers have either been convicted or have pled guilty to a cornucopia of crimes, not to mention the Stevens indictment and the investigation into Alaska’s solitary Congressman for over $1 million in legal fees, the purpose of which he cannot recall. It is likely that there are soon to be more R lawmakers in Alaskan jails than polar bears in trash cans. The state party is a US Attorney's/Attorney General’s dream. The qualifications to be a reformer in Alaska these days require little more than not having made a guilty plea and not having been indicted, or convicted of a crime, which in Palin's case remains to be seen. Indeed, the drop-dead date for the report on the investigation is reportedly October 31st. And, the Inquisitor of Irony is not being ironic whatsoever in claiming that this scares the hell out of the campaign. Reports are that they are really putting the screws to the legislator chosen to oversee the investigation, one Sen. French. Shockingly, Tom DeLay failed to convince him to legally change his name upon the French nation’s refusal to support the illegal invasion of Iraq to Sen. Freedom. That is probably just as well, given his prediction that the report is not likely to reflect nicely on the Gov. Furthermore, given the tone of the letter that he wrote to the private attorney chosen to defend Gov. Palin, which is rather spunky and can be found on the Anchorage Daily News site. The Governor must not think to highly of the abilities of Alaska’s Attorney General, for standard practice is for this official to represent the Governor and any members of her staff in the event of meddling on the part of that pesky legislative branch.


Furthermore, you may rest assured; Palin will have no problem confusing a moral philosophy with a political philosophy. I hope to make that manifestly clear upon posting an evaluation of the documents involved in my pet Palin reading: the documents relating to the investigation of Wooten. In lieu of such an exhaustive reading, I will say this much, one may doubt that Palin has any notion whatsoever as to what may constitute a moral philosophy upon having her actions in this drama of the absurd laid out.


Speaking of moral philosophy, let's be honest about McCain the fiction of McCain as a paragon of virtue, engaging in the hyperbolic task of cleaning the Aegean stables, which, if I recall correctly is a task that Hercules had completed at a time when even John McCain was not alive. To be serious, McCain's decision to toss his own loyal operators, those who were fundamental in crafting his status as the moral maverick of DC, in favor of David Schmidt, Karl Rove's lapdog, goes a long way towards refuting the ubiquitous fiction. Additionally, he could always intervene, and tell Rove to get the hell out of his convention, if he is going to continue to beg R fat cats to donate millions to independent groups, so that Obama and Biden may be sufficiently “swift boated”. Disappointingly, McCain appears more than willing to make a Faustian bargain to sell his soul for his most coveted desire: to employ the very same character assassins who so effectively destroyed his best chance at being President by coordinating the famous push-polls "informing" the upstanding R electorate in SC that he had two black children, which nearly all agree resulted in the American fiasco of the past 8 years.