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David Brooks, Jilted

David Brooks makes a saddo face in today’s Times. After describing a hard-working non-ideological voter, “Ben”, Brooks notices that there are few David Brooks to represent him. The right and left have organized, but the center hasn’t bothered to. The right and left have media outlets and think tanks, but the centrists are content to […]
David Brooks makes a saddo face in today’s Times. After describing a hard-working non-ideological voter, “Ben”, Brooks notices that there are few David Brooks to represent him.

The right and left have organized, but the center hasn’t bothered to. The right and left have media outlets and think tanks, but the centrists are content to complain about polarization and go home. By their genteel passivity, moderates have ceded power to the extremes.

So when Ben looked around for leaders who might understand his outrage, he only found them among the ideological hard-liners.

And so Ben has to vote for Rand Paul, or some left equivalent. Brooks makes it sound like today’s centrists suffer from anemia.

[The center’s] paragons seem from the outside opportunistic, like Arlen Specter, or caught in some wishy-washy middle, like Blanche Lincoln.

Actually it doesn’t just seem that way. But Brooks misses the point that while voters often do get turned off by extremes, it has actually been the “center” that has antagonized them. Centrist voters soured on the Iraq War (Brooks supported). Centrist voters grew to detest the bailouts. In his genteel passivity, Brooks described bailout opponents as”nihilists” opposed to “the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed.”

So it seems centrists can be every bit as extreme and polarizing in defense of their policies as Rand Paul or Bill Halter. And normally-centrist voters, who dislike controversy, have grown tired of the political class baiting them. They question the “collected expertise” which seems to run directly against their common sense. Borrow out of debt. Bail out bad actors. In times of crisis in the leadership class, democracy shows up, stinking and loud, to provide a corrective.

Anyway, Brooks closes in the manner of a prophetic ex-boyfriend: “You’ll be sorry you went with him.”

In a few years’ time, Ben is going to look for something else. It will be interesting to see if, by that time, any moderates have had the foresight and energy to revive and define the free labor tradition — a tradition that uses government to encourage work, to reward work, and to uphold the values at the core of Ben’s life.

I agree. It would be interesting if you could sprinkle fairy-dust on Arlen Specter and turn him into a Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But I find it difficult to believe the promise that centrists will get into fighting shape when they have grown flabbier every year of my life. Or the promise of sobriety, when I clearly remember the feverish push for war coming from their salons. Or the promise of temperance and moderation. Or anything the center says, really.

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