David Brooks flip-flops on "values"

[Cocoa]

I don't know if I've seen more blatant hypocrisy.

On July 2, Brooks answers Jim Lehrer's question about the lousy June jobs report by telling us that voters (especially blue-collar ones) care about values more than economic issues, and he thinks it's just swell.

But now that Kerry seems to have been very successful in co-opting the values rhetoric, Brooks suddenly doesn't like that approach. This is at least the second column devoted to ridiculing the culture politics that Brooks specializes in.


http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/political_wrap/july-dec04/sb_7-2.html
<snip>

JIM LEHRER: A problem for the president?

DAVID BROOKS: I don't know. I think this election, the cliche was 9/11 changed everything well actually it did. This is a foreign policy election. When was the last time we had one of those? Maybe 1960s? '68 perhaps. I think it is unusual. How do you predict it? How does it go? 72 was in some sense a Republican president – with an unpopular war – he happened to win.

In some sense I think that the best way to predict how people are going to vote on issues if you ask them on issues, it's do you think it's worth going to Iraq, that's the number one issue; the economy is way down there. I think values are above that. Talk about God, does this person share your values is sort of a vague but important question.

JIM LEHRER: Why do you think the economy is so far down?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think there are a lot of reasons. It was down in 2000. Gore inherited a pretty good economic record. I happen to think the electorate is moving towards value issues and has been for 20 years and values issues and foreign policy in some sense, a values issue, have just taken precedence over bread and butter issues.
think that's an effective, more educated electorate who tend to vote on values less than working class people. I think it's just a shift in what the two parties stand for. Quite often it's values that differentiate people.


http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/news/editorial/9360331.htm

<snip>

We've got 43 million people without health insurance. We're relying on energy sources that are politically dangerous and economically unsustainable. Wage growth is not what it should be, and yesterday's jobs numbers suggest that strong economic growth may not be producing strong job growth. Would it be illegal in these circumstances for at least one presidential candidate to propose policies remotely in proportion to the problems that confront us?

Apparently so. John Kerry and the Democrats spent their convention talking about broad values like unity and military service and almost no time talking about specific proposals. And if you peek in at a Bush campaign event, it's like a traveling road show of proper emotions. Bush will remind the crowd of the feelings we all experienced on Sept. 11. Then there will be several paragraphs on the importance of loving thy neighbor, and several minutes spent reciting the accomplishments of Term 1.

No offense, but where's the beef?

<snip>

The sad thing is that while the candidates have been talking about broad values and modest policies, there are exciting new ideas floating around. For example, people in the health care industry are talking about an essay Michael Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg wrote in the June Harvard Business Review.
more...

[rlev1223]

1. Not a day goes by....

...that David Brooks does't piss me off in some way. Or, rather, the fact that he has become "the conservative that liberals hate to hate."

He reminds me of a caged squirrel, chattering and trying to squeeze his way through increasingly narrow bars. Don't forget that he was member of the PNAC and has gone to great lengths to disingenuously downplay its influence.

I write him occasional emails in response to his columns, most recently about this Values question -- pointed out that it was Nixon who discovered "values" and Roger Ailes who turned them into a permanent wedge issue, but now that Kerry is ceding no ground Brooks suddenly wants everyone to be civil.

He doesn't reply to my missives.

[Eric J in MN]

2. Do any politicians go into specific economic proposals in speeches

to general audiences?

They have websites for that.