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#1
10-08-2008, 03:10 PM
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#2
10-08-2008, 05:06 PM
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David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer to the Republican party" but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as "the two best candidates we've had in a long time."
In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard: [Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices. Brooks praised Palin's natural political talent, but said she is "absolutely not" ready to be president or vice president. He explained, "The more I follow politicians, the more I think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot, because believe me, once in office there's no time to think or make decisions." The New York Times columnist also said that the "great virtue" of Palin's counterpart, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is that he is anything but a "yes man." "[Biden] can't not say what he thinks," Brooks remarked. "There's no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that's tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn't have anybody like that." Brooks also spent time praising Obama's intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him "dazzled": Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say. And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception. Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be "a very mediocre senator," he was is surrounded by what Brooks called "by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party." "He's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team," Brooks said. "I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive."
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#3
10-08-2008, 06:58 PM
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very good at surrounding himself with a team....
crap, sounds like bush eight years ago. that went well.  majority of the country is considered to be center left. why do we keep getting candidates and running mates who are anything but? sarah palin puts me right off, too far right. too far left isn't any better. i want a candidate who supports the entire constitution, not bits of it like the two parties do right now. dems support your right to privacy, your right to free speech. but for gods' sake, forget that second amendment. who the hell put that in there?! republicans support the second amendment but the patriotic act (for example) is anything but....
__________________
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#4
10-08-2008, 07:02 PM
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Party lines on each side are too twisted. The perfect guy would never make it out of his/her respective primary...unless he fibbed on his position on a number of issues.
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#5
10-08-2008, 07:09 PM
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it just kills me that they spout that a candidate has to appeal to his 'base'. in mccains case, the base is his ultra right religious zealots. you know, the kind of folks who think someone should lay hands on the governor of alaska to protect her from witches spells(and yeah, that really happened). jeez louise.
but why do they have to appeal to them? if mccain had chosen a normal person for example...what, the far rights would be so pissed they'd vote for obama?! yeah, RIGHT!! much of the reason that congress went from majority R to majority D is that many ran on a ticket of reform, as being centrists. that drew a lot of votes. problem is, then you get to d.c. and the corruption inhales these newbies and spits them out as party pols. term limits should be instituted in congress. it's in the executive, as well as in many state govts. it should be there as well, so that these folks won't be able to grow their offices, their lobbying groups, etc like they do. they don't become entrenched, and corrupted if they aren't there long enough to get to that point. how many staff members does a freshman senator have? i read once that ted kennedy had over 500 on his staff. you think ted's paying for that?
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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#7
10-08-2008, 07:11 PM
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#8
10-08-2008, 07:40 PM
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__________________
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all. Abraham Lincoln
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