Tim Russert used to say “If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Press.” Of David Brooks, we might joke, “If it’s Friday, Brooks is bashing Ted Cruz.” On both NPR and PBS Friday, the purported conservative-leaning balance to public broadcasting’s natural socialist impulses insisted the problem was that Cruz was just too smart.
On NPR’s All Things Considered, the headline for the week-in-politics segment was “Sen. Harry Reid's Retirement, Cruz's Appeal To Far-Right.” Anchor Robert Siegel asked if Cruz was correct to announce his campaign at Liberty University as a pitch to the Christian vote. Brooks thought that might be a decent strategy, and then attacked:
BROOKS: My problem with Cruz is that he's very, very smart -- he's going to Wall Street these days and impressing people with his intelligence -- but he's in the new era of performance politics. He actually hasn't done much governing in his life but he's done a lot of performing. And he's done a lot of things which are anti-governing, such as shutting down the government. And so we'll see if Republican voters want a guy who's really good at being on TV and really good at making statements but has no governing experience.
On the PBS NewsHour, Brooks brought the same criticism in a different package, insisting that he doesn’t object to smarts, but to Cruz’s insincerity:
BROOKS: He’s a new style of politician with no history of governance, really, no effectiveness as a legislator, but a good media personality and a spokesperson. And, to me, it’s a bit of politics as show business. And I don’t think he has much of a chance, in part because it’s such a crowded field, and in many ways a more qualified field than him, in part because I just don’t think he radiates sincerity.
There are a lot of people who are plenty conservative, but they just don’t find him that sincere. And so he’s so smart. He’s thinking it all through. He’s very polished, but a lot of people think it’s all — it’s so cleverly thought through, they’re not quite comfortable.
If this doesn’t set off hypocrisy sirens about the David Brooks “bromance” with Candidate Obama, you haven’t read the Brooks columns. In a notable 2006 column titled “Run, Barack, Run,” Brooks had zero problem with Obama being good at show business, and not so much in political accomplishment. His tone made him impressive:
Do we really want a forty-something in the White House?
And yet in his new book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama makes a strong counterargument. He notes that it’s time to move beyond the political style of the baby boom generation. This is a style, he said in an interview late Tuesday, that is highly moralistic and personal, dividing people between who is good and who is bad....
“Politics, like science, depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality,” he writes in his book. He distrusts righteous anger and zeal. He does not demonize his opponents and tells audiences that he does not think George Bush is a bad man....this style is surely the antidote to the politics of the past several years. It is surely true that a president who brings a deliberative style to the White House will multiply his knowledge, not divide it.
Does that sound anything like how President Obama has governed, as a nonpartisan moderate, free of partisanship and righteous anger? Did his "radiated sincerity" pan out?
This Brooks column is a masterpiece in getting Obama all wrong.
Brooks also looked a little silly on PBS by trying to rein in any criticism of the harshness of Harry Reid. Liberal pundit Mark Shields praised Reid to the skies. Brooks tried to disagree, to a point. Yes, he was cruel at times, but he’s a fan of the PBS NewsHour, so let’s pull up short:
BROOKS: And the good part is, the effective part, as Mark says, to keep 60 votes together among a very diverse Democratic body was — that is an accomplishment. The bad side, probably the detractors will say, is, he was sometimes extremely loose and sometimes extremely bizarre with the things he said and could be, in my view, overly tough on people, overly rash, overly cruel even.
And so sometimes the public projections weren’t all that one would want in a statesman. But I have always had a soft spot for him, in part because he’s a big watcher of this show, but also because he…(LAUGHTER)
JUDY WOODRUFF, anchor: We’re always glad to hear that.
BROOKS: Yes. But, listen, there’s an authenticity to the guy.
