The State of the Presidency: David Brooks on Charlie Rose

On February 9, Charlie Rose interviewed David Brooks, New York Times columnist.

These were Brooks’ main points:

• Obama is the only politician of true stature in the country. In spite of his present difficulties he has a good chance to be re-elected. The person to challenge him has not yet emerged. It may not be a conventional republican but somebody entirely from outside. (Sarah Palin was not mentioned in the interview but Ross Perrot was.) He listens and “he reads everything.” He is a pragmatist and can be moved by the evidence, as he was on the subject of Afghanistan. Whatever he said during the campaign, a year ago he probably “wanted to get the hell out of there.”

• Obama’s plans for health care reform are dead for the moment – 70%-80% of them are dead. There is no common ground between Obama and the Republicans and they see no reason to cooperate at this time. Why should they when most people in the country are hurting and don’t want to embark on grand new ventures?

• Obama has not yet made a transition to the post-healthcare world. Of the hundred (or so) initiatives his administration launched in its first year the plans for education are the most promising and the most likely to be implemented.

• At first, David Brooks had thought the Tea Party crowd consisted of a bunch of “weird wackos.” That was a great error. They are in fact members of a large movement in both parties made up of people “who recoil against what’s happening in Washington.” They represent a “wind blowing across the country.” The movement goes way beyond the Conservative Right. There has been no ideological shift to the Right in the last year. The movement may represent as much as 60% of the country and be more powerful than either of the two political parties. Its members have a hunger for a new system that does not as yet exist. Obama may still be able to satisfy it.

• The reason for the debacle of the first year is that Obama and his people have not connected organically with the large majority of Americans, the way FDR and Reagan did. This large majority is not against Washington as such: they want to “make it work.”

• Obama’s Washington is run by one class – the highly educated North-Eastern elite. The chasm between that class and the majority of Americans can be defined in terms of their different lifestyles, divorce rates, degree of volunteerism and voter participation. The ruling elite has a degree of social trust not shared by the majority.

• Lack of trust in Washington is a constant in American history. The period of reform from 1932 to 1964 was the exception. Social reforms can be implemented only during period of high economic growth, i.e., not now. (The Harvard political economist Benjamin Friedman has written about this.)

• Obama might have had some success in his first year had he proceeded incrementally and had he given top priority to job creation. Looking back, it was unfortunate that Obama presented himself as The Great Fixer.

• He tried to do too much at the same time. The stimulus program should have concentrated on job creation above all. The reason for these failure was the euphoria generated by the campaign and the election that made him and his people want to seize the moment. After all, a million people were cheering him on the Mall – that is hard to resist! In American politics hubris comes every four years – on Inauguration Day. There were some who warned him about that at the time of the inauguration. He should first have created a framework for the social changes he intended to bring about.

• David Brooks believes the major problem is governmental, not social or cultural. He is pessimistic about the chances for the structures in Washington to become able “to face reality.” But he is optimistic about American society, its educational system and its creativity. He believes the U.S. is far more capable of solving the problems of the day than China’s autocracy.

• Obama’s proposals and program might have taken root if times had not changed. The financial crisis has fundamentally altered the political climate.