David Brooks: The Crack Pipe of Faux-Optimism
David Brooks has a bizarre column today, which, if the New York Times would let you read it, would be found
here.
But since you can't, I'll summarize: The Bush administration has succumbed to second-term blues. But all is not lost. The Bushies can regain their stride, just as Ronald Reagan did in the last quarter of his presidency, by following this advice. "Puncture the intellectual bubble of the presidency." ""Iron out the feuds and tensions." "Kick start a new policy agenda." "Repair relations with Capitol Hill."
Never mind that Brooks' memory of Reagan's last years is considerably more upbeat than the reality. (The Republicans remember Reagan through rose-colored glasses, just like he did with everything.)
But how about this? David Brooks has written an entire column about how to salvage the end of the Bush term without mentioning the word "Iraq."
This is an intellectual lapse that makes one wince for Brooks. Because let's face it: You could implement all four of Brooks' reforms, and the real cloud hanging over this administration wouldn't budge an inch.
Moreover, as soon as you enlarge the discussion to include Iraq, all of Brooks' suggestions seem, well, pretty silly. "Kick-start a new policy agenda"? Never mind that this White House is not much interested in policy, as
Ron Susskind's devastating book revealed. But how much new policy can you concoct when burdened with massive debt due to a war whose costs seem only to be increasing?
And how, exactly, can the president iron out the feuds and tensions in his White House when the war with Iraq is the source of so many of them? By purging everyone associated with it? That leaves the little problem of the vice-president.
The truth that David Brooks can not even bring himself to deny is that the war is a ball and chain attached to this administration as it drags itself toward its finish line. And not even the White House seems to know how to rid itself of that weight.
