David Brooks. No, really:
The Democrats’ problem, as some senior officials have mentioned, is that they are so darn captivated by substance, it never occurs to them to look out for their own political self-interest. By [the] way, here’s a fun party game: Get a bottle of vodka and read Peter Baker’s article “The Education of President Obama” from The New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago. Take a shot every time a White House official is quoted blaming Republicans for the Democrats’ political plight. You’ll be unconscious by page three.
Credit where credit is due: that passage is the sort of thing that I would write. And the whole article itself… isn’t so bad, once you get past Brooks’ quiet resentment that the GOP is more likely to listen to the average Tea Partier these days than it is likely to listen to, well, David Brooks.
But keep this kind of snark against the Democrats, David, and maybe we’ll reconsider.
Moe Lane
“The Democrats’ problem, as some senior officials have mentioned, is that they are so darn captivated by substance, it never occurs to them to look out for their own political self-interest.”
That certainly isn’t a generic Democrat problem. Think, for example, William Jefferson Clinton, who never did anything non-intern-related without looking at a poll first. And I’d argue that it doesn’t really apply to the current Democratic leadership either. As you probably recall, at the time that they passed the health-care Obamanation, they actually convinced themselves that passing it was in their political best interests, that they were better off with any bill than no bill. No, their problem wasn’t that they weren’t looking after their own political self interests. It’s that due to the Left’s clear tendency towards epistemic closure, their efforts in this direction were an epic failure.
But NYT drinking games could be fun, I’ll give you that.
After reading Brad Thompson’s _Neo-Conservatism: An Obituary for an Idea_, I will never listen to David Brooks again. Period.