Just As It Is: David Brook's On the State of Politics in America

David Brooks is the designated "Republican" or more "conservative" columnist on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. But narrow characterizations like that neither contain him nor do him justice. From my Independent perspective, he is more an American centrist and realist who holds fast to America's highest, most enduring political, economic and social support ideals. And he does not compromise his identity, intellect, or values by being pulled one way or another by the narrowing, polarized party politics of today.

I don't always agree with his assessments or positions on issues, particularly on our warring adventures. And I may be somewhat more concerned that necessary cost-reduction and reform of social programs must still leave education, healthcare, and support of the poor and lower-income retired focused enough and effective enough to maintain the vitality, competitveness and social stability of a country that still aspires to greatness. But he cares earnestly about these things, too. We start with reasonably common assumptions and values, and belief in a political process meant to have as its purpose sharing the best thinking and seeking the best answers for America as a whole. And it calls on our elected national leaders to first and always be accountable for their role as national leader-statesmen. This now, from a recent David Brooks op-ed column in the NYT:

I'm registering a protest because for someone of my Hamiltonian/National Greatness perspective, the two parties contesting this election are unusually pathetic. Their programs are unusually unimaginative. Their policies are unusually incommensurate to the problem at hand.  

This election is about how to avert national decline. All other issues flow from that anxiety.  

The election is happening during a downturn in the economic cycle, but the core issue is the accumulation of deeper structural problems that this recession has exposed — unsustainable levels of debt, an inability to generate middle-class incomes, a dysfunctional political system, the steady growth of special-interest sinecures and the gradual loss of national vitality. 

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers' share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. In 1960, for example, 83 percent of those in the working class were married. Now only 48 percent are. ... 

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefyingly boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible. Gigantic tax cuts — if they were affordable — might boost overall growth, but they would do nothing to address the structural problems that are causing a working-class crisis.  

Republican politicians don't design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.  

As for the Democrats, they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels! It was telling that the Democrats offered no budget this year, even though they are supposedly running the country. That's because they too are trapped in a bygone era.  

Mentally, they are living in the era of affluence, but, actually, they are living in the era of austerity. They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won't be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.   

---"Pundit Under Protest," by David Brooks, New York Times (6.13.11)

Amen. And of course, David Brooks is not the only one making these observations. Sane, balanced, but sad voices from all sides are shouting out these obvious failures of our two parties and our national political process to all who will hear it. They are calling out our elected US House members and Senators. But so few among those sad assemblies appear to be listening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/opinion/14brooks.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper