Much like a Karl Rove interview, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the incompetency in a David Brooks "article." As your head swirls with wrong assertions, falsehoods and hyperbole, it occurs to you that this person actually gets paid to write crap like this and on top of that, there, somewhere is presumably an editor who has read it and 'approved.'
A few years ago, there wouldn't have been the ability to counter paid crap with free crap, but thank goodness for the Internet and sites like Huffington Post.
When faced with an overwhelming choice of falsehoods and errors in his article, "The Postwar Election" I decided to simply pull out sentences and together we can dissect them.
Let me say the overall 'theory' Mr. Brooks is espousing is that the world is now calm, so we aren't looking for a wartime leader but a peacetime president.
Here's the first nugget:
"In Washington, the National Intelligence Estimate was released, suggesting the next president will not face an imminent nuclear showdown with Iran."
Actually, no, what the NIE showed was that the president of the United States is either grossly incompetent for not knowing what was in an old NIE or lied about it. Iran is still an issue and the Middle East is hardly a garden of eden right now, especially with deaths in Gaza overnight suggesting that Mr. Brooks's comment:
"In the Middle East, the Arabs and Palestinians stumble toward some sort of peace process."
is insane.
He spreads the same level of commentary about Iraq -- noting another misguided midget of punditry, Peter Beinart:
"As Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has noted, the number of New Hampshirites who cite Iraq as their top concern has dropped 14 points among Republicans and 16 points among Democrats."
Unfortunately for both these mental minors, there is a a far more substantive Gallup poll out as well, allow me to quote:
"The Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 2007, poll asked Americans to name, in their own words, what will be the most important issues they will take into account when deciding whom to vote for in next year's presidential election. Thirty-six percent of Americans say Iraq, with the economy (16%), healthcare (15%), and illegal immigration (10%) mentioned next most often."
Seemingly, we are in a golden moment where the American people know what matters, Iraq, even if our politicians and our 'journalists' do not.
The American people know that when over 170,000 men and women are serving in uniform on the other side of the world and it's costing us $12,000,000,000 a month, it's an issue that impacts every part of our lives - if you are in Iowa and are concerned about the future, ponder this:
Imagine what a city of just over 50,000 people could do with $54 million. Just imagine.
Mr. Brooks goes on and on. But as he notes, people are indeed frustrated about the war over the war.
Just as I am frustrated by people such as Mr. Brooks being seen as competent.