1 Boring Old Man

The Insider’s Crusade
By DAVID BROOKS

^{Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.). The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).}

^{This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.}

^{Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists…}

^{And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons, I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition…}

^{Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity. Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests…}

^{Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.}

And, like many, at some level I’m inhibiting my O-phoria because of that day 45 years ago. Other similar days don’t linger in the same way for me. MLK and RFK? By that time, I [we] felt only numbness. It just added to the dispair. A whole way of thinking went up in the smoke of the assasin’s guns. And we never got it back. In 1968, we had a shot at redemption. We could’ve voted for RFK. Instead, we had the Chicago Democratic Convention and Nixon’s election. So we old guys fear for President Obama, and we will continue to fear for him until – just until…

David Halberstam wrote a book in the 70’s, The Best and Brightest, about how the incredible talent that Kennedy amassed in the White House still made the mistakes that got us into the Viet Nam War. Raw talent still doesn’t guarantee success. But such negative thoughts are really unfair, the post-traumatic memories of an older man [me]. I remain convinced that had Kennedy survived, they would have recognized their mistakes in Viet Nam and pulled us out. I also think they would have handled the Civil Rights conflict in a much better way than "all thumbs" LBJ, and we would be in a better balance with that than we are now. So I’m determined to get over my post-traumatic O-phoria-phobia and audaciously hope.

^{First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. Orszag, who will probably be budget director, is trusted by Republicans and Democrats for his honest presentation of the facts.}

^{Second, they are admired professionals. Conservative legal experts have a high regard for the probable attorney general, Eric Holder, despite the business over the Marc Rich pardon.}

^{Third, they are not excessively partisan. Obama signaled that he means to live up to his postpartisan rhetoric by letting Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship.}

^{Fourth, they are not ideological. The economic advisers, Furman and Goolsbee, are moderate and thoughtful Democrats. Hillary Clinton at State is problematic, mostly because nobody has a role for her husband. But, as she has demonstrated in the Senate, her foreign-policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic…}

^{Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity. Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests.}

Coming from a respected Conservative, things don’t get much better than this endorsement. Ever since the election, I’ve been obsessed with only one thing – the Conservative Liberal Dichotomy. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is a false dichotomy. It’s the creation of "Straw Men" by the last Administration and their Media Sidekicks – Fox, Rush, Ann, etc. The straw man fallacy is one of the most common perversions of logic used in modern political discourse [right up there with the ad hominem fallacy]. It involves distorting the position of your opponent, then attacking the distorted view [the straw man]. I now think the apparent Liberal/Conservative divide in this country was created by the Republican Party, on purpose, as a way of consolidating their own support. They’ve created an invented "Liberal" who they talk about constantly – "raise your taxes," "take your guns," "get Talk Radio off the air," "give in to terrorists," "Socialists," "give away money to welfare mothers," etc. The list is endless – the Mythical Liberal.