Brooks and Bad Faith

I said I wouldn't revisit the David Brooks wars, but then Matt went and wrote this:

I don't at all adhere to the school of thought that says "if Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks like Barack Obama, he must be evil." That said, I do think it's clear reading things like this doozy from Brooks today that one important driving force behind the sophisticated right's praise of Obama is a simple belief that he'll probably lose in the end. Then, when Clinton is nominated, having praised Obama to the skies they can lament that once again -- sigh -- the Democratic Party has let them down and they have no choice but to vote for the Republicans. The effort here is to somehow bracket the Bush years as just some kind of goofy one-off that we can forget about and remember that the real issue -- as it so often seems to be here in Washington -- is Bill Clinton's sex life. Or something.

As an analysis of what "sophisticated conservatives" (and some unsophisticated ones as well) will probably do if and when Hillary Clinton wins the nomination - i.e., contrast her unfavorably with the far more appealing Obama - I suppose this argument makes sense. But as an analysis of what's actually going through the minds of those same sophisticated conservatives as they say nice things about Obama now - and especially of what's going through the mind of David Brooks - this imputation of machiavellian bad faith seems like the purest nonsense.

Comments

I don't know about Brooks, but I do believe that most Republicans think Obama will be easier to beat. They're right.

Posted by Cal | January 29, 2008 1:05 PM

this imputation of machiavellian bad faith seems like the purest nonsense.

Right. Why would anyone suspect Brooks or any of the other Blue State-Blue bashing conservatives of bad faith?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 29, 2008 1:06 PM

Agreed. Many conservatives think, if we're going to be stuck with a liberal statist, at least let's have one who doesn't make our stomachs turn with hypocrisy and sleaze. The thought of having to listen to HRC for 4 years is, well, unappealing.

Posted by jbd | January 29, 2008 1:08 PM

Is it purest nonsense in the case of William Kristol?

Posted by minderbender | January 29, 2008 1:18 PM

4 years of HRC would be small penance for inflicting 8 years of GWB on the country and the world.

Posted by Tiparillo | January 29, 2008 1:34 PM

In 2000, huge numbers of liberals who had absolutely no intention of voting for a Republican under any circumstances, expressed admiration for John McCain.

Were those liberals ALSO frauds, deliberately trying to pump up a candidate they thought Al Gore would beat?

Or is it possible, JUST possible, that sometimes we find ourselves liking and even admiring politicians we can't quite bring ourselves to support?

Posted by astorian | January 29, 2008 1:35 PM

No really, Tim, why would you think David Brooks is writing in bad faith. He's not a political operator like Kristol. Is there some example from Brooks past you're thinking of? He may be known to shade an anecdote to make it more interesting, but that's quite different...

Posted by Ben A/baa | January 29, 2008 1:38 PM

I don't see Matt as saying that this is *the* explanation for Brooks' gushing about Obama, just that it's one important explanation. I'd bet he's overstating its relative importance in Brooks' case specifically, but I doubt that it's *completely* irrelevant to the way Brooks responds to Obama that he's the underdog. If nothing else, conservatives like to think of themselves as the underdogs facing the mighty Clinton machine, so he's got to wind up identifying somewhat with Obama's position.

In any event, there are plenty of other reasons for Brooks to like Obama. Perhaps he thinks the GOP is going to lose, and genuinely prefers Obama to Hillary, for atmospheric, tempermental and policy reasons. Obama won't be painful to listen to, and seems to consider conservatives and Republicans to be honorable opponents rather than enemies. And he's running on an (arguably) less left-wing economic platform than Clinton is (though, by the same token, he's running on an unequivocally more left-wing foreign policy platform than Clinton is).

Perhaps, as is sometimes the case with Brooks and more often the case with Sullivan, the attraction isn't about politics or policy at all, but about the desire to be fulfilled through political events. Brooks is a National Greatness Conservative. Whatever else that means, it must mean he wants America to be "great" and it implicitly identifies that "greatness" with political leadership. So Brooks will inevitably be more attracted to a politician who seems to have a touch of "greatness" about him - so long as he is not (to use Louis Farrakhan's description of Adolph Hitler) "wickedly great." I'm sure Brooks, in his own mind, votes regularly for FDR and Truman over Dewey.

Anyway, not every conservative is as partisan as Hugh Hewitt. Brooks is on the less-partisan end of the spectrum, relatively speaking. For Brooks, the contest between compelling abstractions - "the '60s" versus "the '80s" or "exurbia" versus "bobos in paradise" - may be more compelling than the contest between parties. As such, inasmuch as he sees Obama as lining up on "his" side in one or more of these contests, he may find Obama genuinely compelling.

It's notable that Andrew Sullivan, who shares many of these qualities with Brooks, is enthusiastic for three candidates: Obama, McCain and Paul. I'm not sure these three actually agree on *anything* with two exceptions: none of them favor a Federal Marriage Amendement, and all of them are against legalizing torture. So his enthusiasm can partly be chalked up to his personal litmus tests, but it's also a matter of his attraction to certain personalities, his ability to connect to certain narratives, which can't be readily reduced to policy positions.

Posted by Noah Millman | January 29, 2008 2:07 PM

I dissent. By way of full disclosure I am a very conservative Republican.

IMHO, Mrs. Clinton may have a somewhat better chance of winning than Mr. Obama, but she can't possibly get more than 51-52% of the votes and her coattails will be very short; Mr. Obama, on the other hand, could well catch a wave and win with over 55% and bring 60 Democrats into the Senate along with him, which would be a disaster of monumental proportions. For that reason, I am holding my nose and hoping that Mrs. Clinton gets the nomination, even though she and her husband are purely reptilian, repulsive creatures (it is nice to see that the left has finally realized this about the Clintons - they're the same as they've always been, it's just your perception that has changed) and Mr. Obama is a gentleman.

Posted by DBL | January 29, 2008 2:27 PM

I agree with DBL. The best possibility for the Republicans would be for Clinton to win the nomination after a Clintonian subtly savage fight against Obama. This would then give McCain a fighting chance, and even maybe Romney.

Obama with a frothy campaign in the theme of change will probably defeat McCain or Romney.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | January 29, 2008 2:37 PM

The right-wing noise machine and the main-stream media are utterly indistinguishable when it comes to the Clintons. Ergo, anybody who beats Hillary is great. I'm not even a Clinton supporter, but I'm disgusted by the endless narrative of Hillary hatred.

In reality these two candidates are not that different in what policies they would enact.

The media just likes Obama because he's a fresh face and they can invent a new narrative (Camelot revisted?) rather than re-hashing the faked up scandals of the Clinton years.

Frankly, this is going to be an interesting election, with Republicans stuck with McCain instead of a real conservative for the first time since Gerry Ford, and liberals stuck with Hillary.

Posted by Cugel | January 29, 2008 2:38 PM

Yes, this is right up there with the analysis by some conservatives that the New York Times' endorsement of John McCain is a devious trap.

Posted by Brainster | January 29, 2008 2:43 PM

I like Brooks' piece, and I like David Brooks. And I like Andrew Sullivan, and I can understand why most posters wouldn't like either of them. They write in full sentences and full paragraphs, in a fairly open-hearted style.
The chiefs of TMZ.com recently talked about why they've so extraordinarily successful. They said the instant-gratification generation wants to scroll through and fast-forward through the news, and they like it short, loud, often cynical, often angry.
Sounds like most of the threads, and most of the pundits on FOX and MSNBC.
I like James Fallows too. He doesn't work very well with the "short, loud, often cynical, often angry" crowd either.

Posted by fougasseu | January 29, 2008 3:29 PM

No really, Tim, why would you think David Brooks is writing in bad faith. He's not a political operator like Kristol. Is there some example from Brooks past you're thinking of? He may be known to shade an anecdote to make it more interesting, but that's quite different...

Fuck. Fair point, baa. I actually thought of just that distinction, with the same two people for comparison, just after I posted my comment. But, for some reason, Brooks bothers me much more than Kristol, whom I don't really mind because of his bad faith.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 29, 2008 3:42 PM

Sorry Matt, but I'm with Ross on the Brooks piece. The idea that Brooks would pen this sentence re Ted Kennedy's senatorial career--"He has embraced that role and served that institution with more distinction than anyone else now living"--as part of some cynical ruse to get the (supposedly) weaker democrat nominated, is more than a stretch. It's ludicrous.

Posted by ropo | January 29, 2008 3:54 PM

Mostly, I agree with Noah Millman.

Also, I'm not accusing Brooks of being part of a plot to praise Obama in order to get the weaker Democrat nominated. Some people on my side of the aisle believe that's what's going on, but I don't. What I do think is that one thing that's appealing to Brooks and other conservatives about Barack Obama is that praising him is a means by which to denigrate Hillary Clinton.

I don't think I'm accusing Brooks of anything particularly dastardly here. Surely it's uncontroversial that over the years John McCain attracted a lot of praise from liberals who were praising McCain in order to make Bush look bad.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | January 29, 2008 4:53 PM

"this imputation of machiavellian bad faith seems like the purest nonsense."

It is...

But its a Brooks pure nonsense.

Posted by Fitz | January 30, 2008 12:57 PM

I don't know about Brooks, but I do believe that most Republicans think Obama will be easier to beat. They're right.

Well, every poll taken says you are 100% dead f***ing wrong, but thats just because Hillary supporters are like Neocons and have no respect for things like evidence and reality.

Posted by libarbarian | January 30, 2008 2:25 PM

Consistent with Will Wilkinson's sentiments that Matt posted and commented on yesterday, I tend to just think Brooks is just a fawning adolescent drawn to the Obama aesthetic of big-boy seriousness and high-mindedness. Like Andrew Sullivan minus the blog.

Bah!

Posted by Jeff | January 30, 2008 8:14 PM