It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”
[….]What really struck me about the meeting, however, was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions. In other advanced countries, everyone gets essential care whatever their medical history. But in America, a bout of cancer, an inherited genetic disorder, or even, in some states, having been a victim of domestic violence can make you uninsurable, and thus make adequate health care unaffordable.
So what did we learn from the summit? What I took away was the arrogance that the success of things like the death-panel smear has obviously engendered in Republican politicians. At this point they obviously believe that they can blandly make utterly misleading assertions, saying things that can be easily refuted, and pay no price. And they may well be right.
Bobo:
The Republican leaders, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, were smart enough to stand back and let Senator Lamar Alexander lead the way, which he did genially and intelligently. While Alexander was speaking, Reid and Pelosi wouldn’t even deign to look at him.
Once you got to the other members, about two-thirds of the statements were smart and well-informed. This was not a repeat of the Baltimore summit, in which Obama dominated the room. This time, Obama was very good, but so were many others, like Mike Enzi, Jim Cooper, George Miller and Tom Coburn. If you thought Republicans were a bunch of naysayers who don’t know or care about health care, then this was not the event for you. They more than held their own.
I have yet to meet an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with lots of sensible ideas. My parents both feel this way, though they will no longer admit it to me.
History will not judge this era kindly.
Aaron
I would hope that history does not judge this era kindly. At some point reality just became too hard to deal with, so Bobo and the like retreated into some right-wing dreamland where facts are optional (if not frowned upon) and everything is good news for [insert republican leader]. And the only people willing to call them on it are comedians.
jenniebee
I think that what came out of that today is that, however much Republicans might be concerned with what Cantor called people’s “alleged” problems getting coverage, that it’s more important to them to stick with a free market approach than it is that people don’t die for lack of money.
JGabriel
David Brooks (via Doug):
So, now, on top of being a prissy, pompous, Orwellianly bad writer, I have to add “lives in alternate universe” to the list of the sins of David Brooks?
Sigh. Will these tribulations never end?
.
Comrade Luke
Did the coverage actually allow you to see where Reid or Pelosi were looking at Alexander or not?
You know the thing that’s fascinating? I don’t know if I read it here or somewhere else, but the observation was made that the biggest problem with politics right now is that everyone is analyzing how things look, instead of what’s actually discussed.
I can’t read this stuff the same way ever since. Bobo is such a perfect example of “style” over substance, and really contrasts with Krugman’s wonkery.
Martin
And there’s really no point reading any further. Bobo called the winner of the horserace in his eyes. Did Obama smackdown Walnuts? Sure. Big fucking deal. It’s the last clip that should get shown and the first one that is.
Maybe the next summit should be a 6 hour long yo mama contest with Bobo and crew scoring. The winner gets to write the federal budget for next year and the runner up decides what country to invade for 2011.
freelancer
Blumenthal is skeptical that the media coverage of this whole thing won’t amount to a hill of beans. Have you seen this hilarious Second City vid he linked to?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuhfMWjHCkM
Martin
@Comrade Luke: Yeah, there were camera angles that allowed that, but it’s a 6 1/2 hour long meeting. Who the fuck goes eyes glued the entire time, and even if they broke gaze for 30 seconds, Bobo was gong to give the ‘ZOMG! They’re too weak and ashamed to even look at him!’ writeup.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
I have to admit, even for the GOP, today’s performance was pathetic. Lamar and his fact gaffe, McCain and his epic fail at being the pissy concern troll, and some other ass with the boilerplate whines about tort reform.
After a year of scorched earth, this is what they could come up with? Obama smacked them all down without even taking a deep breath.
If this had been a football game, the benchwarmers would have been sent in for the fourth quarter, the game was over at halftime.
JGabriel
OT, cute story. I’m looking out my window, just now, in midtown Manhattan, at 1:00 am in the morning, down at a trio, two women, one man, gathered around … something. As I’m puzzling over what it it might be, one of the women turns her face up, sees me, and waves.
So I wave back. The other woman turns around and waves too. Muffled words, semi-shouted. I open the window.
– Do you have eyes?
– What?
– We’re making a snowman! Do you have anything we can use for eyes?
.
Comrade Luke
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
What difference does it make how poorly the Republicans do when the pundits say they did well?
I didn’t watch it, and I’m not hearing that the Republicans got routed from anyone other than the lib blogs.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised if they looked terrible, but it’s irrelevant if everyone gets their facts from Bobo.
eemom
goddamit, I knew this was gonna happen. I was in a good mood today because Obama and the others finally exposed these lying, heartless shitbags for the lying, heartless shitbags they are in the bright light of real time teevee……I was hoping people would SEE, and UNDERSTAND…..
and along comes Bobo.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Comrade Luke:
I feel the heartache, but honestly, can there be more than three people who are not righty fucknuts crazies who pay any attention to what Brooks says, ever, about anything?
The man reminds me of a guy selling wallpaper to bored wives in Scottsdale.
MikeTheZ
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: The problem is, of course, Americans can do a much better job describing the intricacies of the 4-3 vs. the 3-4 defense than they could tell you what the words “public option” or “reconciliation” mean.
freelancer
@JGabriel:
You gave them urinal cakes, didn’t you?
Comrade Luke
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: Actually, some of my most frustrating conversations have been with extremely rational, left-leaning people who think Brooks is a level-headed centrist. Add in the “he’s even in the liberal New York Times” and it gets even more annoying.
He’s one of the most dangerous ones out there imo, because people take him seriously.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@MikeTheZ:
Maybe, we couldn’t even find one hand’s fingers worth of people on this blog who could figure out what Obama really said during his campaign about “public option” and where it fit into his vision of HCR.
And in the end, the real villains of the HCR piece are the Dems. They basically sat by with their thumbs up each others’ butts while the Death Panels and the SociaIist kabuki went on last year. But for our lack of discipline, we’d have had a bill signing by now. The GOP is absurd, but our team let the Absurds win the tournament.
Mark S.
Bobo doesn’t usually bother me that much, but this column is dogshit.
1. Republicans held their own if you think the entire solution to health care is tort reform and eliminating fraud from Medicare.
2. Bobo seems surprised that Obama and the Democrats don’t want to start completely over. This is apparently highly partisan.
3. Bobo also seems very confident that reconciliation will fail. I don’t know about that.
4. The excise tax is a trillion dollar tax increase?
5. At least for once he didn’t start talking about Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, but he does say that there are philosophical differences in how to solve the problem. I think this is bullshit, because left to their devices, I don’t think the goopers give a shit about health care reform. They think the system is just fine (“best health care in the world”).
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Comrade Luke:
A few people do. But a few people think almost anything.
A few people think that The Wire was the best thing ever on television, amirite? A few people think that they are going to float up to Epcot Heaven when Jesus calls them, while their neighbors go into metaphoric wood chippers. A few people think Brooks is relevant, for good or bad. Meh.
Nylund
My father, a 75 yr old dyed in the wool Democrat, thinks Brooks is a very reasonable and thoughtful man. He thinks this mainly of his News Hour appearances and not because of NY Times columns (which my father doesn’t read). If Brooks says something, my father takes him at his word. Personally, I think Brooks is indeed more reasonable on News Hour (where he knows the viewers are more liberal) than he is in columns and other shows.
My father and I tend to get in fights when I try to point out the flaws of David Brooks. Then again, when we get truly absurd GOP push polls, my father tends to fall for them.
EG. when they ask, “Do you support Democrat [sic] plans for government takeovers of private insurance plans that would force rationed care on Americans?” he answers “no” even though no such plans even exist. I keep telling him he should answer “yes” just to mess with the results of such absurd questions, but his “beliefs” won’t allow him to answer in support of such government takeovers, even if no such plans exist.
Yutsano
@Comrade Luke: It’s the PBS gig. He’s there with the ineffective Mark Shields (nothing against him he’s a very smart man but he’s a terrible arguer) so therefore he HAS to be a reasonable person, amirite? And to be honest, he really dials it back when he’s on that show, he’s much much worse in the Times.
Don SinFalta
Well, although you haven’t met me, I’m an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with any sensible ideas. And I have met others. Don’t lose all hope, we exist, and in some numbers, too.
LarsMacomb
DougJ, you write:
“I have yet to meet an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with lots of sensible ideas.
Hi! Nice to meet you.
I am 53. My spouse, also, an academic, is 55. We both agree that Brooks is a deceptive and manipulative right-wing operator. So do all of our friends. His strongest supporters are in the media industry.
Much of his “standing” with the American public comes from his relative non-combativeness. Given the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, and so forth ad nauseam, yeah, he seems reasonable and thoughtful.
But, speaking as an academic, I find that to be ridiculously faint praise. We academics commit our lives toward the noble pursuit of seeing through nonsense. Have a little faith.
Buggy Ding Dong
History is written by the winners, and our side has the ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory like no other.
jenniebee
zomg, the stupid, it burns:
That’s the excise tax that they never expected or intended to actually be paid, mind you, because everybody would drop to worse insurance rather than pay the tax. The theory for how it would raise any money was that, since nobody was getting good medical coverage anymore, that – here’s miracle number one – employers would raise wages to compensate, and this rise in wages would furnish the actual tax revenues without – and this is the miracle number two – without wiping out the benefit of those revenues by sparking inflation.
I’m smelling a lot of If coming off of this plan.
Hippie Killer
Throughout most of West Virginia, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone over 50 who even knows who the fuck Bobo is. Even conservative republicans.
Mark S.
@jenniebee:
I still don’t know what Bobo is talking about here:
Where the hell is he getting $1 trillion? The excise tax was never going to raise anything near that:
And that’s if it even works (if costs aren’t controlled, it will be a disaster) and if employers do give their workers raises after shifting them to shittier health plans, which I kind of doubt as well. You’re right; there are a lot of ifs.
Medicine Man
Huzzah for West Virginia.
LM
I guess you can be sure Obama has shown great bravura if Krugman can’t bear to mention his name even once in his column. Since he couldn’t quote Obama’s excellent take-downs of Reps–can’t quote if you won’t credit–he had to say the same things Obama did, only to less effect and with less elegance. Does it seem ex-spouse level petty to conspicuously avoid alluding to someone when discussing his meeting? The column reads as if the event had somehow happened in the passive voice without a leader. As soon as Krugman finds an opening for frosty jabs again, though, I’m sure he’ll remember Obama’s name.
JGabriel
freelancer:
Heh.
Actually, I can be very sweet at times. I searched my cupboard and found two black tin tops shaped a bit like anomalocaris eyes. Tossed them out the window – I’m on the second floor – then got them a potato from the fridge when they asked for a nose.
There is very little I won’t do for a cute French woman at 1:00 in the morning, especially when she says, “Merci!”
.
Bill E Pilgrim
Hmm, an academic over 50 who thinks David Brooks isn’t a thoughtful conservative with sensible ideas…. hmm, I can’t think of a single one, oh except maybe for the first one you quoted in your post alongside him ;)
No one I know thinks Brooks has sensible ideas, and that includes more than a few academics over 50.
evap
*waves hand* I’m an academic over 50 and I definitely don’t think David Brooks is a thoughtful conservative with sensible ideas. (Okay, I’m a mathematics professor, but still…)
El Cid
@ DougJ:
Well, that may be so, but they’re entirely wrong, and they don’t really care enough about the subject to think through whether that’s right or wrong.
There are lots of people who can feign expertise and brilliance, and often times we call them salesmen. Some people find late night / early morning infomercials to be staggeringly convincing and authentic.
I can understand people wanting to fantasize that Brooks is the reasonable conservative intellectual they can feel comfortable with in both style and substance, but he’s not, he’s a disingenuous, pompous, hack fop.
thomas Levenson
I am a 51 year old academic who thinks that Bobo is a catastrophic disaster of a pundit who deliberately and with bad faith makes sh*t up to serve preordained ends. He is reasonably bright, much less so than he thinks; he’s lazy; and he knows the answer before he begins.
He’s also ridiculously data- and work- averse with a pattern of serious factual “errors” (I’m too polite to call them what I think they are) that would have gotten him fired if there were any accountability left for alleged star journalists.
He is both the poster child for and a significant contributing cause of MSM decline in general and that of the NYT in particular. Who needs to pay for this kind of crap when so many people (me?) are perfectly happy to spout our equally-or-much-better informed opinions for free.
satby
@thomas Levenson:
Hear, hear! (or in the intertubes traditions: this).
Bobo is the template for crap journalism.
SGEW
Over the years, I’ve managed to convince my father (an academic over 50) that David Brooks is a worthless, mendacious fool. George Will too.
It took some work, tho’ (and he still doesn’t quite get how awful Thomas Friedman is).
Barry
Dougj: “I have yet to meet an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with lots of sensible ideas. My parents both feel this way, though they will no longer admit it to me.”
The biggest lie in the world is not ‘the check is in the mail’, nor is it ‘I’ll respect you in the morning’.
The biggest lie in the world is ‘my colleague is a good and honest person’.
IMHO, the amount of dishonesty and general scumminess in the world is directly related to this, since so many of the scum get away with it repeatedly, because their colleagues will look the other way.
The Grand Panjandrum
Shorter DougJ: My world is small so I get to write stupid shit about what I know of academics over the age of 50.
Emma
Hi. Add me to the list of over-50 academics. Of course I’m actually a librarian, and we become experts on faculty spouting bull, so we recognize them at 500 yards through a blizzard…
Aspasia
I’m an academic who is way over 50. I think David Brooks is a scumbag. Can’t even stand to look at him on the teevee, he is so full of . . . mendacity.
Lee Hartmann
I’m an academic, over 50, and my take on Bobo is roughly along the lines of Matt Taibbi.
In non-coarse language: a smooth Republican apologist/hack/concern troll. Which doesn’t make him any less of a scumbag.
Lee Hartmann
Sorry, hadn’t seen Tom Levenson’s comment. Word.
Cerberus
Per others above, the main two problems is that the people who “matter” i.e. the media and politicians care more about style than substance, too wrapped in election coverage to stop treating everything like a campaign horse race.
That and the fact that we publicly care far more about money than people’s lives. Tell people that a law will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and they will yawn and scratch their butts, but tell them you’re going to raise their property tax by 1% or devalue their property values or something will cost a millionaire a couple of hundred thousand dollars and people’s hearts will sing and they’ll be prompted to immediate action.
We’ve been carefully taught…or at least certain generations have been carefully taught to ignore the plight of real people on behalf of protecting the money. This is why threats to “the economy” are given so much more credence than doing right by people and why the HRC debate which should have been the stories of the many, many, many people being fucked is dominated by both sides talking solely about the money and whether it will be protected by the law.
Now, yes, HRC reform also saves our economy by removing a useless parasite of a health insurance industry from our economic engine, but that should never have been the main focus of the debate to begin with. Our mortality rates are a joke, near third world level for the poor because health care in this country is a joke, a dire warning for every other first-world nation not to let the crazies get too much power.
And yet, we dither about money.
And that’s what they’ll say about the last days of the American Empire. When everything collapsed, they counted their money while the masses starved to death in the streets.
gogol's wife
@LM:
I agree with this post wholeheartedly. I’m an academic over 50 who can’t stand Brooks, but I’m also deeply disappointed in Krugman, whom I used to admire. I guess I still admire him, but really don’t get his refusal to give Obama his due.
Dean
“I have yet to meet an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with lots of sensible ideas.”
Let’s meet for beer if you come through Atlanta. I am an academic slightly over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is thoughtful, reasonable or conservative. Bobo is a fraudulent empty-headed hack.
thalarctos
Yoo-hoo, Doug–over here! Add me to the list with Dan, evap, Emma, and all the others.
Trinity
@Cerberus: This, this…a thousand times This.
thalarctos
Whoops–Don, not Dan. Sorry about that!
Laura Clawson
FWIW, I’ve met a lot of academics over 50 who think Brooks is an ass.
ricky
I
I have yet to have a conversation with an academic over 50 who would want to have a conversation about Bobo. If I did it would probably not last long, would result in derogatory comments about him on both sides, and not be the memorable. Which means I may have had one.
Ash Wing League
And you know the saddest thing about all this? A majority of those pompous asses that like Brooks’ columns also think that he is an Obama fan and being too lenient on him in his writing.
God, I hope my generation is smarter than these fuckwits.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Historians will judge this era as a repeat of the US circa 1870-1900.
It really is deja vu all over again.
hilzoy
“I have yet to meet an academic over 50 who doesn’t think that Bobo Brooks is a thoughtful, reasonable conservative with lots of sensible ideas.”
Howdy!
DougJ
When I say “meet”, I mean in real life. I realize plenty of you are over 50 academics who don’t like David Brooks.
I’ve argued about Brooks with nearly everyone I work with who’s over 50 as well as with my parents, all their friends, and various aunts and uncles. They all like him. It’s 20 for 20 at this point.
harryp
(HerrDoktor?)DougJ:
Allow me to introduce myself. I’m an academic of (semi) wealth and (r)age: Brooks is at best a mastabatory sophist.
DougJ
@Laura Clawson:
In real life or at Netroots Nation, etc. Seriously, if you are an academic, ask all of your over 50 colleagues about Brooks. You will find that the vast majority love him.
JohnMcF
@MikeTheZ:
The truth is most of us Canadians can tell you in real detail what the problem with our hockey team’s power play is right now and how we better get it together if we’re going to beat you guys in the gold medal game on Sunday but we have no idea how our health care actually works.
Most Europeans can drone on for hours about how their team has to push deeper into the box and be more successful off of crosses if they’re going to compete at the World Cup this summer but have no idea how their health care works.
This is one time when the devil isn’t in the details, it’s in the broad strokes. People need to be offended by the idea that their neighbours don’t have health care. (maybe it has something to do with the ‘u’ in all those words…)
mvr
Count me as another academic (a year) over fifty who doesn’t think Brooks is especially thoughtful. I do think he has a stake in seeming thoughtful.
celticdragonchick
That assumes that we don’t implode the whole country at some point in the near future and turn into Jesusland and …wherever else we end up living.
suemick
I am an academic over fifty who actually thinks Brooks is a transparent poser. He wants to think of himself as a grand social philosopher, standing above the fray, recognizing the general trends that are visible to the great thinkers, but lost to the little people (who are too busy living in the moment to see the overarching themes…). Too bad for him that in the end his theories are weak cover for poor argument and partisan hackery. (I admit I also can’t get past the image of him as the loser ‘striver’ in middle school class, shooting up his hand with every question, mouthing ‘ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!’)
t jasper parnell
@DougJ: Sorry but this is just nonsense. I am nearly 50 an academic and I talk to colleagues etc all the time and none of them think this. For your claim to make sense academics have to be dumber than dirt.
jl
Fridays are fun because you can compare the High Krug and Bobo side by side.
The High Krug provides facts and references, that can be checked and bases his arguments on them. Bobo offers asinine observations that any fool who watches a twenty second clip would know (Obama was organized and focused), and smug fact free assertions and conclusions with no evidence and no argument.
The High Krug concludes with a realistic assessment of future options, Bobo ends with a smug tendentious (in old style Founding Fathers’ talk: ‘interested’) and probably incorrect assertions (eg, health care reform probably won’t happen this year) that perfectly suits his paymasters’ preferences.
Ohio Mom
I know a lot of people who think Brooks is reasonable, insightful, even witty. Most of them aren’t academics, though a few are 70+ yo retired academics. They are all very upper-middle class and priviledged in every way.
They are educated and well-traveled. They are the sorts who like eating in downscale ethnic places, even though they could afford much fancier places, and have season tickets to the local experimental theater. They have nicely decorated homes, maybe a midcentury chair, maybe some bohemiain touches. Lots of books and art.
Typically, the husband is an attorney and the wife a social worker. Or dentist and art teacher. Their children all went to good schools and got professional jobs — well, except for the ones who just graduated, and it’s a mystery why they can’t find a job because unemployment happens to other people. The retired ones go on frequent Elderhostel trips to places like China and Turkey.
They consider themselves liberal and they do vote for Democrats. But if I’m honest with myself, most of them aren’t that much different from Fox viewers — they are on automatic pilot. It just happens they vote they way I like. They have every reason to have a clue but together, have not a one. And I know lots of them.
Northern Observer
I didn’t know what a Sophist was before I read Bobo’s columns. I knew it in the sense that you know a definition that is written in a dictionary, but to know what it means in your gut … Bobo showed me what a Sophist truly is. Too bad he uses his mendacious talent to help republicans control the elite discourse. Wanker.