Cafeteria Conservatives

David Brooks writes,

So I guess we’re all bailout artists now?

We do seem to have reached some Bernanke-era consensus. In normal times, the free market works well. But in a crisis like this one, few are willing to sit back and let the market find its own equilibrium.

This is consistent with many, probably most, modern "conservatives" - free markets are great when an individual is having a house foreclosed, is drowning in credit card debt, or is bankrupted by medical costs. They're horrible when a large business may fail, and the government had best be fast with a handout.

It's pretty standard for the "there are two types of people" crowd - they latch on to an ideology that purportedly makes them superior to those they oppose ("Conservatives favor free markets; liberals favor handouts"), but make little to no effort to consistently apply those principles. When multi-billion dollar subsidies are handed out to energy companies, even as those companies enjoy record profits, well, that can be ignored. When the markets catch up with a poorly managed company, the market principles that they supposedly embrace can suddenly be ignored because "this is different".

You know what? It goes both ways. I call myself "cheap", my wife says I'm "frugal". But I'm fiscally conservative, in a small "c" sense. I don't like to hand out my money to anyone. I am much more willing to offer people help when they are in a fix that is not of their own making. So I'm much more sympathetic to the financial plight of somebody who is drowning in medical debt than somebody who is drowning in credit card debt arising from self-indulgent spending. I'm not at all sympathetic to the idea that people who are at the top of the economic pyramid need government handouts. Yet that's the Republican approach to energy companies, and corporate welfare in general.

I see the current crisis among financial institutions as analogous to that self-indulgent credit card debt - and view it as unfortunate that the incompetence and corruption involved is on such a large scale that we can't just "let the market take its course." But I see few signs that the Republican Party or the supposedly pro-market leaders of those institutions share my sentiments - at least when their millions are on the line. Citi Group was no doubt lobbying hard for the Bankruptcy Reform Act, to keep people from discharging credit card debt - but it would no doubt leap at its first opportunity to have the government subsidize its debts and nationalize its losses. What would a self-professed "free-market conservative" call such a bailout? Probably something like "bipartisan stimulation".

Brooks on Spitzer

Without "naming names," David Brooks has written what is obviously intended as an armchair psychoanalysis of Elliot Spitzer. I wonder, though, if it isn't more of an introspective essay - where Brooks might find himself but for his preternatural ability to resist marshmallows.

They go through the oboe practice, soccer camp, homework marathon childhood. Their parent-teacher conferences are like mini-Hall of Fame enshrinements as all gather to worship at the flame of their incipient success. In high school, they enter their Alpha Geekdom. They rack up great grades and develop that coating of arrogance that forms on those who know that in the long run they will be more successful than the beauties and jocks who get dates.

Then they go into one of those fields like law, medicine or politics, where a person’s identity is defined by career rank. They develop the specific social skills that are useful on the climb up the greasy pole: the capacity to imply false intimacy; the ability to remember first names; the subtle skills of effective deference; the willingness to stand too close to other men while talking and touching them in a manly way.

Is it just me, or did that get a bit weird toward the end....

Oh, I suppose Brooks paints one path to narcissism. (Mike at Crime and Federalism seems more inclined to see this as sociopathy.) The high school geek, certain of his own superiority, reinforced by family members (but not by peers), who gains a position that vest him with money and power. But at the end of the day, it's the destination that matters. Some of the more common manifestations of personality disorder:

Narcissistic personality disorder

• Inflated sense of - and preoccupation with - your importance, achievements and talents


• Constant attention-grabbing and admiration-seeking behavior


• Inability to empathize with others


• Excessive anger or shame in response to criticism


• Manipulation of others to further your own desires

Brooks himself knows that the narcissistic geek is the exception, not the rule, in positions of leadership. How did he put it?

The only real shift between school and adult politics is that the jocks realize they need conservative intellectuals, who are geeks who have decided their fellow intellectuals should never be allowed to run anything and have learned to speak slowly so the jocks will understand them. Meanwhile, the geeks have learned they need to find popular kids like F.D.R. to head their tickets because the American people will never send a former geek to the White House.

Also, if history tells us anything it's that there is no single personality type that is inclined toward a Spitzer-type fall from grace. The "jocks, cheerleaders and preps" are more likely to get a position of fame and/or fortune from which to fall, but maybe that makes no difference to Brooks, who states that in high school:

... all prestige goes to jocks, cheerleaders and preps who possess the emotional depth of a cocker spaniel.

Does Brooks see anybody as having emotional depth? Other than possibly himself?

I'm left with the question, why does Brooks focus on lust, and not the other deadly sins? Does he believe that a hyperachieving nerd is more susceptible to this type of scandal? That Gary Hart and Bill Clinton were unpopular nerds in high school? (What about JFK and Lyndon Johnson?) That Charlie Sheen, Eddie Murphy and Hugh Grant are nerds at heart, involved in prostitution scandals due to their "rank-link imbalances"? Or is it that he's trying to find a way to wag his finger at Spitzer without acknowledging the fallen heroes of the right - Newt Gingrich, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, George Allen, Bernie Kerik, etc., likely to soon be joined by Don Young and Ted Stevens? Because when you broaden the context and include the more typical cases, you can really see how Brooks missed the mark.

Obama On The Attack

David Brooks believes that if Obama goes on the attack, his campaign will disappear in a puff of smoke.

In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.

Let's see.... On the one hand, we have hardcore Barack Obama supporters, who often seem to be out for Hillary Clinton's blood. On the other hand, we have those of us who never thought of Barack Obama as something special or transcendent. Which of us will be turned off if Obama "goes negative" on Clinton or McCain, particularly if he does so in a dignified manner? (There's no need for swiftboating, "Willie Horton" ads, or similar abrogations of honor and honesty.)

Senator Clinton says that she has a longer history of service in the Senate than I do. She says that Senator McCain has a longer history in the Senate than I do. I don't dispute their distinguished careers as Washington insiders. Yet Senator Clinton claims this means she and Senator McCain have "a lifetime of experience" that they will bring to their campaigns. Take a look at their votes, their foreign policy decisions. Having a long record of bad judgment on key issues of national security and defense is not a qualification to be President.

Here's my challenge to Senator Clinton. Identify the foreign policy decisions where we've disagreed, the Senate votes where we were on opposite sides, and explain why in every case my judgment proved to be better.

Would that approach be so offensive? (It works on McCain, as well.)

Political Divisions

Taking on David Brooks' idiocy in a somewhat more comprehensive manner.... When I saw the headline for his piece, and the blurb in the New York Times RSS feed, I thought, "He's stating the obvious." You can't win a national election without pulling together people with divergent interests, and you can't make major policy changes without causing some of them to become unhappy with you. Such an article would have been stating the obvious, but for the most part that's all Brooks does.

Instead, he claims that even though the Democratic candidates are running on a platform that puts health care reform front and center, and Iraq war policy close behind, that the people who vote them into office will suddenly become aghast at any effort to translate those campaign promises into policy. Note to David: Those people are going to vote for McCain.

Brooks first imagines that the Arab world will oppose our withdrawal from Iraq (as if we would withdraw to the point that we could not continue to guarantee the flow of oil), that the military will oppose withdrawal (loss of military progress, even in the face of zero political progress), and he imagines that this withdrawal would occur on the eve of elections (yeah, right) and thus that Americans would scream about our not giving the elections a chance. (Because the last elections, and the associated propaganda about "purple fingers of freedom" proved so successful in turning things around, right?) He also imagines that the fringe group who wants to "bring all the troops home now" will have the ear of Congress or the President. They won't.

I think it is pretty clear at this point that we will not see political progress in Iraq as long as we maintain the status quo. The Shiites have no incentive to share power with the Sunnis - they are the majority, and are happy to wait us out and make Iraq their country. The Sunnis have no incentive to compromise with the Shiites - the compromises offered tend to worsen their position, anyway, and they don't expect a long-term benefit from any current deal. The Kurds are pretty much doing their own thing - does anybody actually expect them to join in any sort of Iraqi state that would be able to impose its will upon them, as opposed to a loose confederation? The Iraqis don't share all of our goals for the country, and even when they do they aren't necessarily capable of implementing them. Prolonging the occupation won't change that.

Brooks is one of the champions of endless war. He'll be one of those bringing out a "parade of horribles" about what withdrawal will mean. He'll be among those smearing the proponents of any effort to end the war. But he as no ideas - zero, zilch, nada - about ending the conflict. The answer from his brand of useful idiot is always the same, "Even if our track record is one of total political failure, we should just keep doing what we're doing."

You know what? Brooks has a full year to demonstrate that "doing the same thing, over and over again" will finally produce different results. If it does not, I fully expect that the 61% or so of the population that supports withdrawal will grow. If he truly wishes endless war, he had better start thinking of something more persuasive than, "If we keep doing the same thing, eventually things might improve."

This also ties into his second argument - that despite eight years of total fiscal irresponsibility under G.W., it falls upon the Democrats to once again play the part of the fiscal grown-ups, balance the budget, and pay down the debts of an irresponsible Republican administration. Say what you want about Congress passing the budget, the fact is our present fiscal situation is the direct result of Congress's implementing GW's spending (and tax cut) priorities. Brooks whines that health care reform will be expensive. Yes, but here's one for him - it can be sold as a trade, with the $200 billion per year we're wasting in Iraq being shifted over to a policy that actually benefits Americans. (Sorry if you don't like the term "waste" - but for the period of time after Hussein's regime was toppled, unless and until we achieve political progress we're pouring good money after bad.) During the transition out of Iraq, they can borrow from GW's "Brooks-endorsed playbook" - "We're at war, so we get to run up deficits, and not to worry - the budget will (miraculously) balance in five years," coupled with optimistic budget projections.

... Because Criticizing The President Is So Good For Your Military Career

David Brooks babbles about a response to any troop reduction plan for Iraq,

There would be irate opposition from important sections of the military, who would feel that the U.S. was squandering the gains of the previous year. A Democratic president with few military credentials would confront outraged and highly photogenic colonels screaming betrayal.

Highly photogenic retired colonels? Because as anybody with a brain in his head knows, a colonel on active duty who screams "betrayal" at the Commander In Chief will be committing career suicide, and probably won't be holding that rank for very long.

The media seems to prefer photogenic retired generals, a lot of whom are arguing for phased withdrawal. (But when has Brooks, a cheerleader for the war, ever let such trivialities as facts interfere with his opinions.)

Take It On Faith - The Markets Will Heal Themselves

Today David Brooks gives us another of his "there are two types of people" columns, this time in relation to the financial markets. As usual, one type of person agrees with David Brooks and is correct, and the other type of person disagrees with him and is wrong. The latter group accepts a "greed narrative" of the financial markets, in which:

The financial markets are dominated by absurdly overpaid zillionaires. They invent complex financial instruments, like globally securitized subprime mortgages that few really understand. They dump these things onto the unsuspecting, sending destabilizing waves of money sloshing around the globe. Economies melt down. Regular people lose jobs and savings. Meanwhile, the financial insiders still get their obscene bonuses, rain or shine.

Smart people like Brooks know better, and endorse an "ecology narrative":

It starts with the premise that investors and borrowers cooperate and compete in a complex ecosystem. Everyone seeks wealth while minimizing risk....

Hedge funds have proliferated to help investors manage risk. These things exist precisely because investors want to smooth out volatility. In the old days, a blow to, say, the Texas economy could have dried up lending in Texas, but now funds flow globally, and money from one part of the world can shore up weakness in another.

The problem with the ecology narrative, according to Brooks, is not greed, but is inexperience:

When a new instrument enters the market, it takes a while before people understand and institutionalize it. Whether the product is high-yield bonds or mortgage-backed securities, there’s a tendency to get carried away.

In the first stage of this adolescence, investors look around and see everybody else making money off some new instrument. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford notes: “They assume they are fine because they see everyone else buying it.”

Brooks assures us that this rush into the new and unknown isn't driven by greed - it's just inexperience. There is no "greed" to be found when an extremely well-compensated investment banker or financial professional pours investor money into an investment vehicle that he doesn't understand. He's like a teenager who gets to drive a muscle car - he may get a little bit carried away, wrap the car around a tree, and cause a great deal of anguish for the owner, but what can you expect from a teenager? I mean, an investment professional earning six or seven figures a year.

Then, finally, maturity sets in. Those who have lost great gobs of money get fired. People still find the new product useful, but within parameters and with greater safeguards.

The lesson of the Ecology Narrative is that, in most cases, the market corrects itself.

Whence the parameters and "greater safeguards"? Voluntary self-regulation? Government regulation? Either way, why is it necessary? Brooks has already told us that investors only crashed the car because of their inexperience - under his "ecology model", after the instrument is understood and institutionalized, why would they make the same mistake again?

People who embrace the Ecology Narrative don’t like the offensive bonuses that get handed out on Wall Street. They just don’t see any way the government can curtail them without rending the fabric of the ecosystem. They don’t like the periodic crises, but don’t see how government can prevent them without clamping down on innovation.

Yet they have no qualms about having the government pour billions into a failing company to subsidize up a failing industry, pour billions upon billions into failing savings and loans to prop them up, pour billions upon billions into a "stimulus package" to offset a recession brought on in part by the way adolescent investment professionals crash their new fiscal vehicles. The "fabric of the ecosystem" is only rendered when the government tries to prevent calamity or, Heaven forbid, put responsibility for righting the mess on the shoulders of the recipients of those "offensive bonuses".

Perhaps I should have saved some typing and simply pointed out that Brooks regards the two narratives, greed and ecology, as polar opposites. In fact, they can and do coexist in the markets. It's foolish to pretend otherwise.

... But First He Has To Win The Nomination

David Brooks appears to believe that John McCain is the best hope for the Republican Party in a presidential election. He's probably correct:

While various conservative poobahs threaten to move to Idaho if Huckabee or McCain gets the nomination, the silent majority of conservative voters seem to like these candidates. Huckabee has done very well among evangelical voters while loudly deviating from conservative economic orthodoxy. John McCain leads among Republicans nationally. He has a 71 percent favorable rating and a 23 percent unfavorable rating. He has a 63 percent favorability rating among Huckabee supporters, 66 percent favorability among Romney supporters and 81 percent favorability among supporters of Rudy Giuliani. These are much higher second choice ratings than any other candidate.

Except.... First he has to win the nomination, and as Brooks concedes there are many within the party establishment who not only vehemently oppose McCain, they are actively savaging him. If McCain wins the Republican nomination, he will have to overcome the consequences of that internecine warfare. Many of the people who are currently warring against McCain will not get behind him in the general election, and those who do risk looking like clowns (although in some contexts that's probably not much of a change). Some of those critics will also have to open their wallets to support his campaign.

At the same time, "moderate, centrist" McCain will have to overcome the infamous "hug" photograph, his flip-flopping on the religious right, and... his willingness to commit to a century or more of "more of the same" in Iraq. If, as Senator Clinton believes, a McCain candidacy will turn on issues of national security, I think he has the wrong message.

McCain also has a senior Senator's problem - an enormous voting record which makes it pretty easy to map out where he stands on the issues - and where his votes have changed, or where his current promises are inconsistent with his voting record. Also, although this isn't his fault, McCain is looking rather peaked.

It was (and is) a mistake for the Republican Party to underestimate McCain (and overestimate the likes of Giuliani, Romney and Thompson). I agree with Brooks' suggestion that it would be a huge mistake for the Democratic Party to underestimate McCain (or, for that matter, to underestimate any Republican nominee). But I think that when the Democrats finally get down to defining a platform - one that is appealing to the public while departing substantially from the Republican candidate's platform - it will be much easier to do so against McCain than against any other leading candidate, and that could be a real advantage going into the election. They can also stress commonality on some of the issues that drive the Republican establishment crazy. So yes, McCain has a shot at winning, but if Brooks is putting him forward as the strongest Republican candidate things still look very promising for the Democratic Party.

It's Probably My Fault....

I said "David Brooks got it right", and probably set off some sort of shift in the cosmos leading to today's column, which is one of the silliest pieces of mind-slop ever to spill across a major newspaper's editorial page. I would share some comments, but I think it speaks for itself.

Inspired by the Founding Fathers....

David Brooks explains:

When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

The "and others" maybe, although those "others" behind the "Southern Strategy" would seem to have relied upon Lincoln's pre-Civil War statements on race. But the neoconservatives? Which words does Brooks have in mind?

I can just picture the founding fathers arguing that we had a duty to invade foreign nations to liberate their people and spread democracy. I can just picture Lincoln insisting that the Civil War would be a cakewalk, could be won with 100,000 troops (maybe 30,000 or so more if things don't go well), and that the people of the south would greet us as liberators. Can't you?

Based upon the actual policies they have advanced, I think it would be more accurate to say that the neocons derived their brand of conservativism by watching the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Brooks On Entitlements

I don't know if it's worth the effort or not, but... a few days ago David Brooks wrote a rather silly piece on entitlement spending:

They [does he mean "I"] bombard you with alarming statistics about unsustainable entitlements. The U.S. government has $43 trillion in unfunded liabilities, or $350,000 for every taxpayer. Standard & Poor’s projects that in 2012, the U.S. will lose its AAA bond rating.

Okay... so how exactly is this "alarming" statistic derived? What period of time does it represent - a century? What assumptions does it rely upon? Is it a deliberately alarmist "worst case scenario"? And what does it mean for an entitlement to be "unfunded", anyway? I'm all for fiscal responsibility, but based on facts, not silly made-up numbers.

Presidential candidates vow to offset the cost of health care plans through “cost savings” measures, and everybody pretends those savings are actually real. Republicans promise tax cuts and people pretend those pledges are not absurd. Democrats vow to pay for their grand spending plans by raising taxes on the rich, even though each one percent increase in the top tax rate only produces $6 billion in revenue.

We're returning to reality, with some valid concerns about present tax policy and promises... although why does Brooks think that the rich (a class notorious for not paying income taxes, as their revenues are derived largely from other means) can only be taxed on their income? Has he somehow missed the furor raised by the wealthy any time somebody hints at, for example, a capital gains tax increase?

These habits infect everything they touch, even a straightforward and successful program like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of uninsured children has been declining steadily for years. It shouldn’t be that costly or hard to insure the ones that are left.

The number of uninsured children has been declining... since the 1997 introduction of SCHIP. A modest expansion of SCHIP should help insure even more of them. So, of course, recognizing the success of the program, David Brooks opposes any expansion.

First, it perpetuates a smoke screen of obfuscation between who pays and who chooses. States have an incentive to ramp up benefits because they know that most of the cost will be borne by taxpayers somewhere else. Second, it entices children out of private and into public insurance, even though after 2012 it cannot cover the cost.

So which is it, David - will states use the additional money to increase the benefits offered, or to insure more children? Which children are enticed out of private insurance (answer: not many), and why would SCHIP be preferable to private insurance for those children? There's a category of insured people commonly described as "underinsured". If Brooks can demonstrate that the private insurance coverage is comparable or superior to SCHIP coverage, he has a point. If not, there should be no surprise in that people will leave an inadequate private health plan for another (from any source) which is superior and comes at the same or a lower cost. Sad to say, private health insurance plans are often grossly inadequate.

And suddenly Mr. "Oh no, don't tax the rich!" is concerned about regressive taxation:

Third, it creates a fund-raising mechanism cowardly in the extreme. Politicians in Washington like to talk in the abstract about shared sacrifice. They could go to the American people and say: We need to insure more children and to do that we’re going to raise broad-based taxes slightly.

But that’s honest and direct, and therefore impermissible. Instead, this program is funded by raising taxes on smokers, who generally are much poorer than average Americans and much less educated. High school dropouts smoke at roughly three times the rates of college graduates.

Let's see... Congress could ask the President G.W. Bush to make a statement about "shared sacrifice" and sign into law a bill which modestly increased taxes. (Have you stopped laughing yet?) And Brooks' new-found concern for regressive taxation.... has he ever before complained about the regressive nature of cigarette taxes? Has he ever proposed cutting or eliminating those taxes due to their effect on the poor? Let's see where he stands on tax policy....

Seventh, raise taxes on carbon emissions and use the revenue to make the tax cuts on capital gains and dividends permanent.

He is consistent on the whole - don't raise income taxes for the rich; cut capital gains taxes for the rich; cut tax on dividend income for the rich. His concern about tax on the poor is situational - there's no evidence that he cares a whit about regressive taxation, but here he thinks a feigned concern will help his argument. (Cruch the numbers and... even an analysis meant to support Brooks' claim of regressive taxation demonstrates that, in fact, the benefits of SCHIP inure to the poor at a level which vastly exceeds their share of the increased cigarette tax - making the tax regressive in the abstract, but progressive in implementation.)

Deficits, obfuscations and trickeries that were once unthinkable are now the norm.

But enough about the New York Times editorial page.

Slow To Acknowledge Reality

David Brooks describes that it has taken five years for (him and other) "policy makers" and self-described experts to grasp the obvious:

Most American experts and policy makers wasted the past few years assuming that change in Iraq would come from the center and spread outward. They squandered months arguing about the benchmarks that would supposedly induce the Baghdad politicians to make compromises. They quibbled over whether this or that prime minister was up to the job. They unrealistically imagined that peace would come through some grand Sunni-Shiite reconciliation.

Now, at long last, the smartest analysts and policy makers are starting to think like sociologists. They are finally acknowledging that the key Iraqi figures are not in the center but in the provinces and the tribes. Peace will come to the center last, not to the center first. Stability will come not through some grand reconciliation but through the agglomeration of order, tribe by tribe and street by street.

The tribal nature of Iraq is hardly a state secret. I and many others who don't even pretend to be experts have been discussing that appraoch from the outset.

The problem is not that it takes an "expert" or "policy maker" to recognize that it had greater potential to work than Bush's plan. The problem was that Bush pushed anybody who opposed his plan out of the room, and required that everybody else to provide cover for his notion of a quick invasion, reinvention of the nation, and departure, at minimum cost. Starting locally was always far more realistic than creating a national government, but that approach was inconsistent with the Bush Administrations fantasies of candy and flowers, as well as with the "product" it was trying to sell to the American consumer.

David, the actual experts have been out there all along. All you had to do was listen to them.

"Because They'll Run Government Like It's A Business"

Not that I want to beat up on David Brooks yet again, but he just doesn't stop....

The other flash I saw was at a Romney event at the Lincoln Financial Group in Concord. Romney had slipped away from the policy chunks of his stump speech and was talking about his success in business and in running the Olympics. He was talking about how you assemble a team of people with complementary skills. How you use data and analysis to replace opinion. How you set benchmarks and how often you should perform self-evaluation.

It wasn’t impassioned or angry (he doesn’t do anger). But it was Romney losing himself in something he really cares about, and it opened up a vista of how government might operate.

I am far from the first to observe that while Romney is happy to talk himself up as a great businessman, venture capitalist, near-omnipotent being, etc., he actually does have experience which seems directly relevant to how he would operate if he were in charge of a unit of government. Yes, folks, although he seems to have blacked out that portion of his résumé, Romney actually was Governor of Massachusetts. We don't need to look at abstract theories of what he might do, because we can look at his actual track record.

Brooks deems the Republicans as having an "Uphill Struggle", commenting on this and another "flash" in which John McCain expressed frustration that his party isn't deemed credible - "Nobody trusts us to do what we say we’re going to do!".

The McCain and Romney flashes weren’t about policy. They weren’t part of the normal Republican vs. Democratic dynamic. They were about leadership, honor and intelligence. If Republicans are going to have a chance, it’ll be because, by focusing on the state of American politics, they reshape the battleground under everyone’s feet.

To the extent that the McCain "flash" is about intelligence, it is perhaps the type of intelligence that Lincoln recognized. Bush ran on a platform claiming he "trusted" the American voters, yet his every action since has been illustrative of deep distrust of the voters. Much of his conduct in office, and that of his Vice President and advisors, has been contemptuous of the public's right to honest answers from government officials about even the most mundane of government matters. As for running government like a business? Some joke that Bush failed in every business venture in which he participated, save for his exceptionally profitable minor investment in the Texas Rangers, so perhaps taken literally he did run government in the same manner he would have run a business.

To pretend in the manner of Brooks that Romney's presentation shows that he "cares about" issues of organizational efficiency - an implicit argument that he'll "run government like a business" - without directly relating that claim to Romney's actual actions as Governor of Massachusetts, reflects either an astounding ignorance that Romney has been a governor or dishonesty.

The "flashes" were about leadership - the lack of it in the Republican Party and Bush White House. The "flashes" were about honor - again, the lack of it in the Republican Party and Bush White House. And the flashes were about intelligence - in McCain's case, a recognition of the consequence of trying to fool all of the people all of the time, and in the case of Romney and Brooks, the persistent belief that it remains possible.

"Who Are You Going To Believe - David Brooks Or Your Lying Wallet"

Hacks like David Brooks invest a lot of energy spouting absolute nonsense designed to convince people that the economy is great for everybody. Another reality check for Brooks:

When it comes to the way Bush is handling the economy, 23% of registered voters approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 72% disapprove.

Brooks, presumably, would attribute that to mass delusion... at least in public. I'll assume that, despite the content of his columns, he knows better.

Segregation As "Sad" But Inevitable?

David Brooks penned a column, The End of Integration which opens with the lament, ("Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration"), but (suprise, surprise) he's shedding crocodile tears. And, as is his wont, he relies on a child-like presentation of social anthropology to justify his actual position:

But it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem. It could be that it was like the dream of early communism — a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are.

For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived in small bands. Surviving meant being able to distinguish between us — the people who will protect you — and them — the people who will kill you. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them.

As dozens of social-science experiments have made clear, if you separate people into different groups — no matter how arbitrary the basis of the distinction — they will quickly begin discriminating against others they deem unlike themselves. People say they want to live in diverse integrated communities, but what they really want to do is live in homogenous ones, filled with people like themselves.

So integration is analogous communism? (Did I miss his "Nothing is sadder than the fall of the Iron Curtain" column?)

When Brooks describes people who say they want to live in integrated communities but actually seek out segregation, I suspect he's speaking of himself. This supports any number of "shorter David Brooks" synopses of his column:

• I live in a neighborhood that's primarily white, went to white majority schools, and I've never had a black friend, and I turned out okay.
• Why are people carping about this racism stuff, when they should be addressing real problems like make-believe anti-Semitism?
• I have a black neighbor - every Tuesday - and I would be saddened if he moved away.

I will concede in fairness that David Brooks contends that his comments about anti-semitism were a "joke", although (as with the factual errors that he reinvents as jokes) his delivery of the punch line was a bit off the mark.

The obvious point Brooks somehow overlooks is that whatever divisions may naturally flow between "us" and "them", race does not have to be a principle point of division, or even a significant point of division.

Maybe the health of a society is not measured by how integrated each institution within it is, but by how freely people can move between institutions. In a sick society, people are bound by one totalistic identity. In a healthy society, a person can live in a black neighborhood, send her kids to Catholic school, go to work in a lawyer’s office and meet every Wednesday with a feminist book club. Multiply your homogenous communities and be fulfilled.

Of his examples...

• You can live in a "black neighborhood" or move out of a "black neighborhood" without regard to your race;
• You can attend a Catholic school without regard for your race;
• You can work for a lawyer, or even be a lawyer, without regard for your race (if we assume the lawyer doesn't discriminate when hiring you);
• You can be a feminist without regard for your race; and
• You can join or quit book clubs without regard for your race;

But you can't change your race. Hatred and division predicated on race is qualitatively different, because race is a status and not a choice.

There is no question that society can change its views on race and ethnicity. Many groups which were once subjected to active discrimination are now integrated into our society. Many people who are overtly racist nonetheless display extreme partisanship in favor of a local sports team which is largely black. The color of somebody's skin may present an easy basis for distinction between groups, but the fact that it is easy does not mean that it is desirable or even tolerable within a modern society.

Am I wrong in believing that Brooks would not shrug off another person's dismissal of the segregation of Jews with, "This isn’t the integrated world many of us hoped for. But maybe it’s the only one available"? I suspect he would most likely accuse the speaker of being actively anti-Semitic, or at least of holding anti-Semitic sympathies. I suspect he would be correct. And yet that's his response to racial segregation.

David Brooks On Sex Education

(Yeah, I had that thought as well.)

In When Preaching Flops, a rambling editorial which suggests that Brooks recently read an essay on object relations theory, Brooks sneers,

A little while ago, a national study authorized by Congress found that abstinence education programs don’t work. That gave liberals a chance to feel superior because it turns out that preaching traditional morality to students doesn’t change behavior.

I'm not sure who supposedly felt superior, but it wasn't exactly a surprise that "abstinence only" education failed. To the extent that "preaching traditional morality" translates into "Do as I say, not as I did or do," or, "Virginity is really important... for the girl you marry," who could be surprised by that?

Deciding is conscious and individual, but perceiving is subconscious and communal. The teen sex programs that actually work don’t focus on the sex. They focus on the environment teens live in. They work on the substratum of perceptions students use to orient themselves in the world. They don’t try to lay down universal rules, but apply the particular codes that have power in distinct communities. They understand that changing behavior changes attitudes, not the other way around.

And let me guess... they were created by people Brooks would describe as liberals. As Brooks seems to agree with them, though, perhaps they're Hamiltonian liberals.

David Brooks - a Hamiltonian Liberal?

While lauding himself as a "Hamiltonian conservative", David Brooks today finally admits the only thing separating himself from "big government liberals" is... methodology.

We Hamiltonians disagree with the third group, the mainstream liberals, because their programs haven’t worked out. Retraining programs for displaced workers have flopped. Tax code changes to reduce outsourcing are symbolic. Federal jobs programs aren’t effective. Moreover, the high taxes you need to pay for these programs sap the economy. There’s now a pile of evidence showing that higher taxes mean reduced working hours. In the face of Chinese and Indian competition, we don’t need Americans working less.

Which is presumably why he endorses programs like... expanded funding of education, and free, quality daycare for single parent homes - today adding free nurse practitioner visits to somehow help "stabilize" those families? And talks about how much better off we would all be if only parents loved their children more?

Today, in addition to adding reforms often requested by the political left, such as increased portability of health care and retirement benefits, Mr. Brooks adds this populist element to his "big government" agenda:

National service should be a rite of passage, forcing city kids to work with rural kids, and vice versa.

This would be what? The billionth call for mandatory national service by somebody who has never participated in any form of national service, and wouldn't have to participate in the program he espouses?

Ah, but liberals are often accused of hypocrisy by the likes of Brooks, and as we just established....

Religion Is Great... If You Keep It Secular

That's the message David Brooks seems intent on conveying in his latest column, The Catholic Boom:

Quasi-religious people attend services, but they’re bored much of the time. They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant. They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the people who define it are nuts.

* * *

In fact, if you really wanted to supercharge the nation, you’d fill it with college students who constantly attend church, but who are skeptical of everything they hear there. For there are at least two things we know about flourishing in a modern society.

First, college students who attend religious services regularly do better than those that don’t. As Margarita Mooney, a Princeton sociologist, has demonstrated in her research, they work harder and are more engaged with campus life. Second, students who come from denominations that encourage dissent are more successful, on average, than students from denominations that don’t.

That latter point probably weighs in on the much-ballyhooed survey which shows that college faculty are more inclined to have cool feelings toward Evangelical Christians and Mormons. Perhaps it's not so much about religion, but instead reflects classroom experiences where students were resistant to or intolerant of different viewpoints.

The increasing proportion of religious conservatives on college campuses has brought problems in the classroom and in residential life, particularly in secular universities. Sectarian and fundamentalist Christians often come to college with little or no preparation for understanding or tolerating ideas which confront their beliefs, or interacting with people who do not share their opinions. The focus on religious explanations for all manner of phenomena in fundamentalist communities does not conform to the standards of secular education (Hood et al. 2005). The focus on religious sacred texts as the only source limits the cognitive complexity of thought (Hunsberger et al., 1994, 1996; Sherkat 2006), which may well lead to poor performance and exacerbate conflict with professors.

* * *

In many disciplines, the scripturally based orientations prevalent among conservative Christians may give them a considerable disadvantage in coursework because it lowers the complexity of thought (Hunsberger et al., 1994,1996). Young fundamentalists are convinced that they know the “Truth” and that perspectives which deviate from the scripted narratives of their tradition are not only false, but potentially heretical. Critical argumentation about issues in politics, history, ethics, or sociology is difficult for fundamentalist Christians, since they believe that biblical pronouncements are not only necessary explanations, but also sufficient.

This interpretation is consistent with what Brooks argues in relation to Catholicism - that Catholics have fared better in American society as their views "began to converge with Protestant values" and as "They raised their children to value autonomy more and obedience less".

Brooks makes a novice's error of logic when asserting that because church attendance is correlated with better academic performance, other students' academic performance would improve if only they attended church. I doubt that I need to elaborate on this point, but just in case... while correlation is necessary to establish a causal relationship, it is not sufficient to establish causation. Also, my college experience is replete with examples of brilliant, high-performing students who never set foot in a church. Does Mr. Brooks believe that church attendance would have further improved their performance? That they are irrelevant to his "analysis". What of church-going underperformers? Brooks would have us assume them too dogmatic? Also, although Brooks doesn't mention this, there's more to the picture than church attendance:

Most studies of the effects of religion on college success focus on personal religiosity or on religious participation, and these indicators are likely to produce positive effects. In contrast, more sophisticated longitudinal research shows that sectarian religious affiliation and biblical fundamentalism—beliefs in the inerrant truth of religious sacred texts—have a substantial negative effect on educational attainment (Darnell & Sherkat 1997; Sherkat & Darnell 1999; Glass & Jacobs 2005). Sectarian affiliation and biblical fundamentalism have an especially negative impact on the educational attainment of women (Sherkat & Darnell 1999; Glass & Jacobs 2005). In sectarian and fundamentalist religious communities young women are expected to marry early, have many children, and be primarily responsible for childcare (Roof & McKinney 1987; Sherkat 2007). Even if young sectarian and fundamentalist people choose to attend college, sectarian and fundamentalist Christians are more likely to choose religious colleges, which have fewer options for majors, lower prestige, and are more costly. Finally, the narrowing of social networks and the restriction of information sources advocated in sectarian and fundamentalist religious groups is associated with smaller vocabularies (Sherkat 2006), which can undermine academic success.

I suspect Brooks is familiar with those studies, but chooses not to directly address their implications.

Brooks seems to be arguing for spirituality but against religiosity. He argues that there's a societal benefit in being religious, as long as you are quick to reject religious teachings and doctrine whenever they trigger feelings of skepticism. Given his recent history of platitudinous prosaisms to the "family values crowd", I suspect his suggestion that "We would be smarter (or at least do better in school) if we all went to church" is a fig leaf, offered to disguise what is otherwise a column favoring humanism over religion.

Platitudes

On the heels of marriage as "the best educational institution we have", addressing immigration policy, David Brooks offers us this gem,

People who qualified could bring their nuclear families with them, since families are the foundries of responsible behavior.

This creates some question about his prior objection to current immigration policies,

Under our current immigration system, most people get into the U.S. through criminality, nepotism or luck. The current system does almost nothing to encourage good behavior or maximize the nation’s supply of human capital.

Perhaps in his world, the term "nepotism" doesn't involve the favored treatment of relatives?

For that matter, I wonder if he deems migrant farm workers to be "criminals", beneficiaries of "nepotism", or "lucky"... After all, more than a million are presently legally in the United States, and together with their undocumented brethren they comprise more than half of the nation's population of farm laborers. Typical wages? $7,500 per year for an individual, or $10,00 per year for a family.

Human Capital

A recent column by David Brooks, A Human Capital Agenda, left me a bit perplexed. He endorses as "conservative" a slate of ideas not traditionally associated with conservativism, tosses in a platitude or two to appease the "family values" crowd, and embraces the Horatio Alger myth in defense of inequality. I know he calls himself a conservative, but what does he believe that means?

He embraces Bush's early endorsement of "compassionate conservativism", an idea that never got off the ground, as a "masterstroke [that] should be instructive to anybody running for president today." I could sarcastically ask, "Who says they haven't noticed? Find me a candidate who isn't spouting a load of nonsense that he or she doesn't actually believe." But Brooks seems sincere in this call for conservative populism. He continues in his column with a call for better investment in public education, including the provision of quality daycare for the children of "disorganized single-parent homes". (I guess organized single parents and disorganized "intact" families will have to continue to pay their own way.) To make this call "conservative", he endorses school vouchers - who cares that there is no evidence that, on the whole, they provide any meaningful benefit to their recipients.

He also endorses an expanded wealth transfer from the rich and middle class to the poor in the form of "increasing child tax credits to reduce economic stress on young families". And in almost ths same breath he deplores "liberal populists" who believe in "redistribution policies".) He obviously doesn't consider himself to be a liberal populist, but he tells us, "Conservatives and independents do not" believe in redistribution policies. So again, what does that make Brooks?

Brooks presents the platitude, that his human capital agenda "means encouraging marriage, the best educational institution we have". Sure. Let's shutter the schools, marry preschoolers to each other, and we'll have the best educated society in world history. I would ask what Brooks is thinking, but with the possible exception of "this prattle will make some of my less thoughtful, 'family values' readers happy," he obviously isn't.

Brooks also advances this idiotic caricature:

Liberal populists believe the global economy is so broken all the benefits of it go to the top 0.01 percent. Independents and conservatives observe that hard work still leads to success. Liberals emphasize inequality. Moderates and conservatives believe inequality is acceptable so long as there is opportunity.

In the 1980s, Republican supply-side policies helped spur investment. Today, the world is awash in money. That’s not the problem. Instead the shortage is in people to invest in.

Gee... So the reason that wages aren't rising for the poor and middle classes has nothing to do with the nature of our system. It's that they don't work hard enough, and aren't a worthy "investment." Brooks ovestates his case - not every independent or conservative is as quick to lock Horatio Alger into that type of bear hug.

After All, We Can Only Lose If We Don't Win....

In yesterday's Column, The Insurgent Advantage, David Brooks reviewed a book, John Robb's Brave New War, in a manner which I hope doesn't reflect the actual conclusions of that book. The points he actually attributes to Robb make a lot of sense:

Robb observes that today’s extremist organizations are not like the P.L.O. under Yasir Arafat. They’re not liberation armies. Instead, modern terror groups are open-source, decentralized conglomerations of small, quasi-independent groups.

There are between 70 and 100 groups that make up the Iraqi insurgency, and they are organized, Robb says, like a bazaar. It’s pointless to decapitate the head of the insurgency or disrupt its command structure, because the insurgency doesn’t have these things. Instead, it is a swarm of disparate companies that share information, learn from each other’s experiments and respond quickly to environmental signals.

For example, the U.S. has spent billions trying to disrupt attacks from improvised explosive devices, but the I.E.D. manufacturing stream has transmogrified and now includes sophisticated metallurgy, outsourcing and fast innovation cycles. The number of I.E.D. attacks has remained pretty constant throughout the war.

By engaging in "system disruption", such as by bombing oil pipelines, the insurgents get a significant return with a modest financial or "miliitary" investment. Robb argues that these groups do not seek to overthrow states, but to weaken them and cause the collapse of law and order, while maintaining a level of conflict below what their target states might deem an existential threat. This supposedly inspires target nations to "try to fight wars on the cheap, and end up in a feckless semibelligerent state somewhere between real war and nonwar." (Is that what Brooks sees in Iraq? The U.S. military fighting a war "on the cheap"?)

If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one now is — trouble that this presidential campaign hasn’t even dealt with.

As Israel's recent experiences in Lebanon indicate, you don't have to be in a shooting war with your enemy, nor do you have to be defeated on any battleground, for "extremist organizations" to learn from your tactics, devise strategies against you, and implement those strategies in the field. Brooks himself seems to acknowledge that the learning and adaptation is a constant process, and has occurred throughout the time U.S. forces have been in Iraq. If Brooks truly believes that the danger is in teaching the insurgents how to implement effective strategies against U.S. forces and interests, staying in Iraq may be the worst option. They stop learning from us the day we go home.

If Brooks' earlier comment about fighting wars on the cheap is meant to be applied within the context of Iraq, take an objective look at the manpower invested in the battle. Take a look at the commitment of armament. If that commitment is not sufficient to crush an insurgency led by these loosely knit "extremist organizations", how many nation states can be reasonably said to have sufficient resources to do so? (At about $100,000,000,000 per year, the annual cost of the war exceeds the GDP of more than 100 nations.) I suspect that if you look at the nations which have successfully put down similar "extremist organizations" or grassroots resistance to occupation, you will find that it in most cases it was not the investment of overwhelming military might which led to their successes, but instead that it was brutal, ruthless tactics. Things that even post-911 America would quickly recognize as atrocities and "war crimes".

It may be that a more expensive invasion and occupation force would have been able to suppress the insurgency and maintain public order, while an effective government was constructed for post-war Iraq. Fundamentally that would not have been a "military victory" over these groups - it would have been the manifestation of sufficient military force that they choose not to act, while a political state was constructed which had sufficiently broad support that at the end of the day they could not maintain a sufficient body of fighters to engage in a meaningful "insurgency." Given the realities of Iraq, I'm not sure that would be possible while maintaining a unified state. But the necessary investment would have made the current effort appear to have been conducted "on the cheap".