Keep It Real, David BrooksWe'll respect you a lot more if you stop repeating what we know to be false
David Brooks really needs to get over himself and the patently false point he keeps trying to drive home, which is that Democrats are divided between those who are bitter partisans and those who are less so.The Democrats have drawn the 10-years-out-of-date conclusion that in order to win, they need to be just like Tom DeLay. They need to rigidly hew to orthodoxy. They need Deaniac hyperpartisanship. They need to organize their hatreds around Bush the way the Republicans did around Clinton.- [NYT Select]
It just isn't true, no matter how many times Brooks says it. Perhaps this is what some pundits hope will become CW ("conventional wisdom,") if it is repeated enough. Democrats will have to show David Brooks that he is wrong. George Bush has become an unpopular president, and it has stunned those of us who have paid attention all along that he has gotten away with so much and has fooled so many Americans, with the help of pliant and intentionally tilted (Fox News) media.
Partisanship is a natural political tendency. To see the Bush administration getting away with lies and the systematic destruction of social democracy has never seemed natural. To see Fox News intentionally tilting the news to the right has never seemed natural. To see the Republican majority virtually shutting the Democrats out from the participatory process in Congress at every opportunity has never seemed fair, natural, or democratic.
If Howard Dean takes the time to remind Americans that it was a vile (and sometimes criminal) kind of partisanship that has allowed us to be in the weakened position our country is in today and to allow the evils of poverty and inequality to flourish, then I say more power to him. At the same time, I look to potential presidential candidates who can offer positive ideas to pull our nation out of the rot to which the Bush administration has led us. Americans aren't so stupid that they're going to continue falling for the line about how Democrats hate Bush. We don't have to hate him anymore - he's a proven abuser of the public trust, and so are many who played vile games thinking the media would continue to cover for them. Drunk with power, Republicans got much too cocky. As Bush and his Republican cronies (in Congress, his administration, and beyond) continue to screw up royally, and as each wrongdoer falls in shame, it will be less likely that Democrats will be forced to convince Americans of what's been true all along.
