A Moderate Manifesto (David Brooks: "Barack Obama is not who we thought he was")

New York Times ^ | March 2, 2009 | DAVID BROOKS

[publius1]

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward....

The U.S. has traditionally had a relatively limited central government. But federal spending as a share of G.D.P. is zooming from its modern norm of 20 percent to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was.

[Richard Kimball]

Obama ran on unicorns crapping skittles. The only people who are surprised are the people who thought those jack asses were unicorns and that they’d really be skittles.

[syriacus]

Brooks: [Dem party] caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

It's NOT a new belief by Dems that history is calling on them.

David should look at the paper cuts on the Dems' hands.

They've been waiting for this moment and are greedily digging through their decades-old piles of "to do" lists.

[snarks_when_bored]

How stupid does an elected leader have to be to think that it’s wise to begin to nationalize the healthcare system of a country of 300 million people in the midst of the worst economic downturn in many decades?

[syriacus]

If David Brooks didn’t know what Obama stood for all his political life, then he (Brooks) is too stupid to have a regular column in a major publication. There is no other possible explanation.

Yes!

[Obadiah]

Conservative could NOT have called it more precisely. David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, the gang at NRO got completely snookered by the feeling running up their leg. And now DISASTER has befallen us, in no small measure due to your public support!

[Jagman]

You bastard! Along with Noonan, Chris Buckley and all the other "elites" who thought the O's great temperment would offset the very statements he was making during the campaign about what he would do. And then you have the audacity to say the Republicans are unfit to lead. Well, something tells me if McCain were in office right now we would be seeing major tax cuts, not obscene new spending.

You f**ked up, David, and we all hate you for it.

[syriacus]

David has “Sigher’s remorse.”

[Obadiah]

Nail meet hammer.

[lakertaker]

I remember Newt insisting to Hannity that Obama will govern from the center. Hannity, to his credit, wasn't buying it. Now I see Newt has changed his tone

[Wyatt's Torch]

He’s not who I thought he was either. I thought he was a radical Marxist prior to the election. turns out he’s far worse...

[reagan_fanatic]

Barack Obama is not who we thought he was

[kenmcg]

A note to the intellectual “moderate” David Brooks; us plain folks at FREE REPUBLIC had it right all along. Barrack Hussein Obama and his band of socialist Chicago thugs are highjacking our once great nation.

[SECURE AMERICA]

Obama is exactly who I KNEW he was. A Flaming Socialist bent on destroying America as it was founded. Nothing he has said or done changes that knowledge only enforces it.

[kabar]

Exactly. Can Peggy Noonan and David Frum be far behind? I guess now that they have had an epiphany on Obama, we are all supposed to welcome them back with open arms. I suggest they go back to George Will’s house and have another meeting with the One so they can be reconverted.

[A.A. Cunningham]

David Brooks

[palmer]

FUDB

[listenhillary]

The Obamabots are out in full force in the comments section

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/03/opinion/03brooks.html?s=2#postComment

[Cboldt]

We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

Well then, kwitcherbellyachin'.

Personally, I like those things in general principle, but I utterly reject, with prejudice, that the Federal Government is a reasonable or proper entity for implementing, via the credible threat of violent force, those points.

David Brooks can go gag himself with a spoon.

[NonValueAdded]

He's exactly who we thought he was, David. You had your head stuck somewhere else and couldn't or wouldn't see.

[Toespi]

Which is the problem. They THOUGHT they elected a composite of JFK, MLK, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan all rolled into one wonderful black man ready to CHANGE the world. The joke is on them.