David Brooks: Thinking About Obama

[ErinBerin84]

(I know, It's Brooks. He makes me puke and he's bipolar in his opinions, but pretty positive article on Obama, from Brooks at least. What is it, Brooks? The " Obama's mirror has two faces" BS you tried to pull on us a couple of months ago , or Obama as the "steady mountain"? It's also tiresome when he plays armchair psychologist, and the last paragraph of the article that I didn't include says that it could go the other way and Obama could be an ineffectual "observant" president, but he also says that he could be a great one. Eh, it's Brooks, so I'll take it. I get the sense that he "thinks" about Obama a lot...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


Thinking About Obama , by David Brooks.



We’ve been watching Barack Obama for two years now, and in all that time there hasn’t been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn’t been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness.
Some candidates are motivated by something they lack. For L.B.J., it was respect. For Bill Clinton, it was adoration. These politicians are motivated to fill that void. Their challenge once in office is self-regulation. How will they control the demons, insecurities and longings that fired their ambitions?



But other candidates are propelled by what some psychologists call self-efficacy, the placid assumption that they can handle whatever the future throws at them. Candidates in this mold, most heroically F.D.R. and Ronald Reagan, are driven upward by a desire to realize some capacity in their nature. They rise with an unshakable serenity that is inexplicable to their critics and infuriating to their foes. Obama has the biography of the first group but the personality of the second. He grew up with an absent father and a peripatetic mother. “I learned long ago to distrust my childhood,” he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” This is supposed to produce a politician with gaping personal needs and hidden wounds.

But over the past two years, Obama has never shown evidence of that. Instead, he has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day.


When Bob Schieffer asked him tough questions during the debate Wednesday night, he would step back and describe the broader situation. When John McCain would hit him with some critique — even about fetuses being left to die on a table — he would smile in amusement at the political game they were playing. At every challenging moment, his instinct was to self-remove and establish an observer’s perspective. Through the debate, he was reassuring and self-composed. McCain, an experienced old hand, would blink furiously over the tension of the moment, but Obama didn’t reveal even unconscious signs of nervousness. There was no hint of an unwanted feeling.

They say we are products of our environments, but Obama, the sojourner, seems to go through various situations without being overly touched by them. Over the past two years, he has been the subject of nearly unparalleled public worship, but far from getting drunk on it, he has become less grandiloquent as the campaign has gone along.
When Bill Clinton campaigned, he tried to seduce his audiences. But at Obama rallies, the candidate is the wooed not the wooer. He doesn’t seem to need the audience’s love. But they need his. The audiences hunger for his affection, while he is calm, appreciative and didactic.

snip


This was not evident back in the “fierce urgency of now” days, but it is now. And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem.



snip

[Lifelong Protester]

1. I think that Brooks will go into that voting booth

and pull the lever for Obama. Would be nice if he could do a Buckley for us.

[FrenchieCat]

2. I think he will. McCain is damaged goods!

[AspenRose]

11. Yep

It's like he's trying to talk himself out of voting for Obama and finds he can't do it.

[Cha]

3. Can't believe I'm reading David Brooks and

thinking how well he's describing what I feel about Obama too..and no doubt so many others.

Obama really is getting to them with his intellect and his demeanor par excellence.

[BeyondGeography]

4. Yeah, he's one of the great ones

Now just get the fuck on board already, Mr. Fake Conservative. Live a little.

[democracy1st]

5. K & R

[nomorewhopper]

6. like him or not

david brooks is a man of substance, and a man of "ideas". he is a conservative because of what he believes is best for the country, yet he does not view politics through the polarizing lens of black and white. i think a few months ago i saw him straining to try to be a good republican and support his party, but now he's finally coming around and saying what every intelligent member of the republican party is thinking:

"the emperor has no clothes"

david brooks is not the type who will be won over by somebody like sarah palin.

david brooks is not the type who will appreciate mobs screaming "kill him".

david brooks may not agree with you on tax policy, but he is not a fan of driving our country into debt to win a few political points.

In a nutshell, he's exactly the type of republican who has been flocking en masse to barack obama. i don't know him personally, but i know how he thinks. he knows, deep down, that he's smarter than that. he is not fooled by the brouhaha over palin. he judges people on their actions and deeds, not empty words.

brooks will vote obama. we should welcome him to our side.

[calmblueocean]

7. Brooks makes some great points here, but he doesn't connect the dots: it's about race.

That sense of calm remove Obama has is, in part, because of his racial heritage. We haven't seen this calm before in part because we've never had a non-white candidate nominated for the presidency.

Being a black man trying to rise in a society where whites control most of the power means learning to control your thoughts. But for Obama, it goes deeper, because he was raised by a white mother and white grandparents. So unlike some, he couldn't just retreat to holding negative views about whites when confronted by their racism. He couldn't just smile outwardly while loathing them for their racism inwardly. He saw white people he loved every day, white people who loved him even while holding some racist tendencies themselves.

I think that's a big part of the reason why Obama is engaged at such a higher level than most of us. He's had to not only learn how to rise in a white society, but also had to learn that people are complex, and that even people who may have some bad aspects to them are worthy of respect and love.

It's a powerful thought to think of a man like that in the White House.

[Tatiana]

9. Phenomenal insight. I think you're on to something here. n/t

[ErinBerin84]

8. I'm not as sure as some of you

That Brooks would ever vote for Obama (though I think he really doesn't like Palin..), and he does allow at the very end of the article that Obama could be a passive president . But you know...maybe he just put that in there to "make himself feel better"
:)

Maureen Dowd had a piece where she called Kristol and Brooks, and compared their opinions of Palin. Kristol of course said that Palin was the second coming of Reagan and seemed to be setting her up for 2012. Brooks said that she could NOT be the nominee in 2012...the only thing he allowed was that she had "good delivery"..Greg Mitchell did an article where he calls out David Brooks for not writing an article solely about how Palin sucks, when he has made whispers of it behind the scenes. It's kind of funny.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/david-brooks-held-hostage_b_134627.html

More than eight days (update: now ten, since I wrote this) have now passed since New York Times columnist David Brooks admitted at a Manhattan forum, captured on video by Huff Post's Rachel Sklar, that Sarah Palin was not qualified for higher office -- "not even close" -- and is a "cancer" on his favorite party, the GOP. Yet he has still not shared this view with readers of the Times (let alone suggested that this is a fatal blemish on his view of John McCain).

He has written two columns since then -- the latest today -- which failed to reveal/confirm his "not even close" opinion of Palin. Today's column didn't mention her at all. Last Friday he wrote nothing more negative than: "Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin."

After the "Sklar video" broke, I wrote about this here, labeling Brooks, at the minimum, "frighteningly dishonest." Some of his friends in the media have tried to deflect attention from his "not even close" statement by focusing on the far less significant "cancer" aspect and the fact that he has criticized Palin to some extent in print (while also, for example, declaring that she "established debating parity with Joe Biden). Brooks has also mocked what he called the "smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place."

Who needs Mark Shields? Maybe Brooks should debate himself on PBS.

Yet many of Brooks colleagues on the right have had no trouble frankly labeling Palin unqualified. The list includes everyone from David Frum to Christopher Buckley. Some have cited this in stating they can no longer support McCain.

Just today, Matthew Dowd, the key Bush strategist in 2004, jumped on the anti-Palin bandwagon, stating flatly that she is not at all qualified for higher office, and suggested that McCain, no doubt, will regret the Palin pick after the results in November arrive.

Myself, I am tempted to label the Brooks-Palin team "Brooks and Dumb." Or is that Brooks and Kristol?

[Renew Deal]

10. That was pretty good.

Interesting read. It seems that Brooks like Obama more than McCain and that's about as close to an endorsement you can get.