March 6, 2004
IF ONLY:
Clash of Titans (DAVID BROOKS, March 6, 2004, NY Times)
We're so full of it. We pretend to be a middle-class, democratic nation, but in reality we love our blue bloods. We love our Roosevelts, Rockefellers, Kennedys, Bushes, Deans and Gores. We love the prep school manners, the aristocratic calm, the Skull and Bones mystery, the dappled lawns stretching before the New England summer homes. How else can you explain the Bush vs. Kerry matchup that confronts us this year?In Britain neither of these guys could lead a major party. Their upper-crust pedigrees would be disqualifying. But here in the land of Ralph Lauren wannabes, one all-scion campaign follows another. Here in the land of middle-class self-loathing, we want to make sure that the guy we elect to the White House has lived a life nothing like our own.
So you have one party, the Republican Party, the so-called party of the heartland, which won't nominate a guy unless he has a ranch the size of Oklahoma. Republicans don't think you're fit to govern unless you're on the north 40 every summer clearing brush. And then you have the Democrats, the so-called party of the people, who won't nominate a guy unless his family had an upper-deck berth on the Mayflower.
Clinton, Dole, Dukakis, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, McGovern, Humphrey, Goldwater, Eisenhower...
MORE:
The Battle of the Biographies: Bush v. Kerry. (Noemie Emery, 03/15/2004, Weekly Standard)
BRING IT ON! And there they stand, thumbs in their belts, snorting at each other from opposite corners--the Vietnam vet with three Purple Hearts and numerous medals, and the commander in chief, architect of two wars, with one bad guy's scalp on his belt. Are they tough? Are you kidding? But wait. Alter the slant of the light, and things appear more complex. In this corner is the decorated Vietnam vet who risked his life on the battlefield but turned into the ultimate risk-averse politician, carefully tending his political interests and force-averse when it comes to security issues. And in that one is the man whose service when young was adequate but not glorious, but who as president has taken one huge risk after another.Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2004 8:56 AMThe first test of manhood for both of them came in the late 1960s near the playing fields of New Haven.
And what's with this 'Britain wouldn't have them' stuff? The author forgets that the typical British cabinet (including, I believe, this one) includes a few lords in its number, and that Winston Churchill, whose blood was as blue as it gets, was not out of place in House of Commons.
It's not as if a dynastic family insures success in American politics, at least on the scale the author suggests. Four generations of Stevensons have sat in Congress with only one of them (Adlai Sr. in the 1890's) getting as high as Vice President. As powerful as they are in Ohio, the Taft family craves another Presidency - Bob IV is the best prospect they've had in decades, and I doubt he's even on the long list for Republicans in 2008. You could argue a Heinz/Kerry dynasty if John becomes President, but I don't see that happening.
Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at March 6, 2004 10:19 AMGWB doesn't get elected without his family linage and his business success post-refomation in Texas. But at the same time, he doesn't get elected without the non-patrician demeanor of his father, which would have been death not only in the 2000 election, but in the 1994 gubernatorial race against Ann Richards.
Brooks' weakness is he often gets too facile with his pop-culture refrences and his efforts to pinpoint emerging patterns in politics and society. But those flaws are minor compared to the pop culture flights of fancy Ms. Dowd fixates on in her Times' columns...
Posted by: John at March 6, 2004 10:25 AM"risk-adverse" vs gambler.
Never thought of that comparison before. I'm voting for the gambler, but as a "conservative" shouldn't I vote for the "risk-adverse"
Sometimes you need to take risks to preserve things worth preserving - like democracy.
Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at March 6, 2004 12:02 PMh-man:
Riverboat gambler:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/010420.html
Posted by: oj at March 6, 2004 12:33 PMBrooks wrote some decent stuff in the past but since joining the NYT, he has declined so fast, he makes Maureen Dowd seem insiteful.
Posted by: Bob at March 6, 2004 1:47 PMBrooks is an interesting observer of society and culture, but not a particularly astute observer of politics (certainly not along the lines of Michael Barone, or Paul Gigot). Hence, some really good columns that play to his strengths. And columns like this one.
Posted by: kevin whited at March 6, 2004 2:18 PMDavid Brooks is slowly morphing into David Gergen.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at March 6, 2004 3:45 PMWhen Bob Taft was Sec of State of Ohio I (as a member of the Ohio State Bar Association) meet with him and thought him to be an amiable dope. He was clearly unable to sort out the clerical mess in the Secretary of State's office. As governor, he has proved to be a bad tempered dope, unable to use commanding partisan majorities to deal with pressing issues of taxation and budget balancing.
My prediction, back to cincinnati to write a family history.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 6, 2004 9:25 PM> David Brooks is slowly morphing into David Gergen.
Ouch. But clearly the NYT is putting stuff in his water, or something--this is just embarrassingly silly, as OJ's long recitation of non-blue-bloods shows.
Posted by: Kirk Parker at March 6, 2004 10:10 PM"clearly the NYT is putting stuff in his water"
Probably the same stuff thay've been giving Krugman.
Posted by: ralph phelan at March 7, 2004 6:04 PMReagan, Dole, Eisenhower, Ford and Nixon all came from poor or lower middle class families, especially Dole and Eisenhower. Brooks looks at their achievements and assumes they were born to riches.
Posted by: D. Woolwine at March 8, 2004 12:53 AM