Arthur Silber regards David Brooks's New York Times op-ed column as a looming disaster of trivial proportions:
COMMENTS: I find it rather amusing that a lot of conservatives were thrilled -- thrilled, darling! -- when David Brooks was selected to write a regular column for the NY Times. His first column said, in essence:
Behind the Bush administration's deceptive façade of ideological rigidity and obtuse indifference to facts operates an astute and highly flexible chief executive who will stop at nothing to achieve his own aims.
That's the very accurate summary found here.
Now we have Brooks' second column, which begins with this:
If you were to pick a presidential candidate on the basis of social standing — and really, darling, who doesn't — you'd have to pick Howard Brush Dean III over George Walker Bush. The Bush lineage is fine. I'm not criticizing. But the Deans have been here practically since Mayflower days and in the Social Register for generations.
And the column concludes with this:
The Protestant Establishment is dead, and nobody wants it back. But that culture, which George Bush and Howard Dean were born into, did have a formula for producing leaders. Our culture, which is freer and fairer, does not.
And what's in between is...well, read it for yourself. And it's not even clear to me what Brooks is saying. Nobody wants the Protestant Establishment back, but our culture doesn't have a formula for "producing leaders" -- which sounds as if Brooks, at least, does want it back. Or maybe he doesn't. Who the hell knows? And exactly what kind of leaders does he want? And to lead us to what? (A clue might be in the column's title: "Bred for Power." Well, that's hardly encouraging, certainly not to me.)
To use the Times' precious real estate for these kinds of trivial observations (and written in a cutesy, never-really-completely-serious tone which I detest) -- while the fate of the world might truly hang in the balance -- is disgraceful in my view. (I guess there might be an interesting point in Brooks' topic somewhere, but he certainly doesn't manage to find it, or make it.) Brooks may yet have some valuable contributions to make from his new vantage point at the "newspaper of record" -- but I think he'd better shift gears fast. This is hardly a promising beginning.
I would have thought that a system of traditions and rituals that produced a guy who went AWOL from his Air Force National Guard post, betting (correctly) that the Air Force would not go after the son of a prominent Republican politician--that that's not a system one should rely on for "producing leaders." Nor is there any evidence that our current society is inferior. I see a lot of extraordinarily good leaders who never saw a New England prep school: Bob Rubin, Bill Gates, Colin Powell, et cetera are very impressive leaders whether or not you think they are leading in the right direction.
And it is worth noting that Brooks's opinion that George W. Bush is a "bred leader" is an exceptional minority one, held only by those who spend too much time in the hypnotic thrall of White House media affairs. The dominant view is closer, say, to this one--from the Carlyle Group:
From Unfogged:
UNFOGGED: HOW BUSH GOT BOUNCED FROM CARLYLE BOARD - Suzan Mazur, Progressive Review: Carlyle Group Director David Rubenstein: ...But when we were putting the board together, somebody [Fred Malek] came to me and said, look there is a guy who would like to be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. Needs a board position. Needs some board positions. Could you put him on the board? Pay him a salary and he'll be a good board member and be a loyal vote for the management and so forth.
I said well we're not usually in that business. But okay, let me meet the guy. I met the guy. I said I don't think he adds that much value. We'll put him on the board because - you know - we'll do a favor for this guy; he's done a favor for us.
We put him on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.
He said, well I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board.
And I said, thanks - didn't think I'd ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States. So you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn't have been in that category. So you never know. Anyway, I haven't been invited to the White House for any things...
Or this one:
Posted by DeLong at September 13, 2003 12:08 PM | TrackBackMaking Light: A quote from last November: The quote is from a writeup of a CBS News/60 Minutes interview, Bob Woodward talking to Mike Wallace about his own recent interviews with George W. Bush.
Woodward says [Bush] told him that when he chairs a meeting he often tries to be provocative. When Woodward asked him if he tells his staff that he is purposely being provocative, Mr. Bush answered: “Of course not. I am the commander, see?”
Bush: “I do not need to explain why I say things. — That’s the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
O, my heart sank when I read that quote. I’ve been thinking about it, off and on, ever since.
I recognize that behavior. Lord help me, I’ve seen it done. It’s one of the tactics you can use if you’re in an executive-level job that’s beyond your abilities, you have to have meetings with underlings who know more than you do, and your only concern is to save face while making sure they’re giving you what you want.
The discussion that passes at a normal meeting is subject to normal criticism and analysis. You don’t want that. If instead you run the meeting in a deliberately provocative fashion, it skews the discourse out of shape, generates a lot of noise and confusion, and throws everyone off balance. This camouflages the fact that you don’t know which end of the stick is sharp. It also teaches people that they’re only safe if you’re happy.
Having to ask questions is likewise unacceptable. Being provocative is a way to get your underlings to automatically give you a recap of what the issues are, their relative importance, how the whole picture fits together, and where that underling comes into it. How so? Because of the skew in the discourse. Someone giving an answer he’s already thought about will generally just give the answer. But if you knock him off balance, make him think on his feet and talk while he’s doing his thinking, he’s more likely to narrate the whole mental process leading up to the answer. Even if you don’t get the whole process out of him, he’ll still be giving you half-formed answers, and those will have a lot of context still sticking to them. Either way, you’ll pick up a lot of framing information, and can then act like you knew that stuff all along. You’re unlikely to get called on it by someone who’s still trying to regain his balance.
If in the course of your provocation du jour you make some egregious blunder, you can claim you were just trying to think outside the box. After all, the more basic and obvious the thing is that you just demonstrated you don’t know, the greater the need to periodically examine its underlying assumptions—right? And if you also take the attitude that you owe no one any explanations, you’re pretty much covered on all fronts.
Pulling a trick like that once might be funny if Harry Flashman were doing it; but then, he’s fictional. In the real world it’s lousy management technique and irresponsible command behavior. Proper meetings are an exchange of information that enable the organization to make better decisions. What you’ve got instead is a recipe for meetings where the overall organization comes out knowing less than it did going in.
Your more earnest and straightforward underlings are still going to be trying to fit all that random noise you’re generating into some larger overall picture. It’ll be tough going. The less honest ones will just be trying to keep you happy while pushing their own agendas—and they’ll be at an advantage. It’s tough to come up with truthful, responsible answers under those conditions, because there are thousands of bits of real-world circumstantiality one has to account for. Agenda-pushers just need to know which direction to push, and they’ve got that going in. There’ll be no one to save you from folly.
One more observation. Consider Bush’s statement: Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation. That is not and cannot be the voice of a public servant. What you’re hearing there is a long-accustomed and automatic assumption of privilege: You’re there for me. I’m not there for you.
"What's all this nonsense about it being impossible to educate the mentally retarded? The British aristocracy's been doing it for years."
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
And not just the British aristocracy. I will add that I've now heard two people -- one a lawyer, the other an actual speech therapist - state their strong suspicion, from listening to Bush deliver speeches, that he's dyslexic. I have no other evidence of this, but stranger things have happened.
As for David Brooks, one can console onself with the thought that -- if he keeps serving up this kind of vague, unfocused, non-ideological gruel in his Times columns -- the media's far-rightists will have continuous apoplectic fits about the Times' willingness to hire "fake conservatives". (After all, Jonah Goldberg is already saying that about SAFIRE, for God's sake.)
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on September 13, 2003 12:30 PMjolly good show, old boy! you nailed it! and to think, without a single scrap of economic analysis.
Posted by: john c. halasz on September 13, 2003 01:05 PMBTW, when I say blacks and whites, I am NOT referring to ethnicities, I'm talking about colors in the metaphorical sense. God, that reads racist way, WAY too easily, even with the ying-yang stuff.
Sorry for the double post.
Posted by: Mitch Schindler on September 13, 2003 02:02 PMThat post struck a nerve. It sounds on the money to me, which is depressing. But then the last three years have been depressing.
There's a sizeable market for Brooks's rose-tinted confusion in England. I think I'd start with The Spectator, but really he has many available outlets. My vote would be that he take it over there, except that frankly I'd rather he dumped it in the trash.
Dyslexia is not retardation. I think this thread needs those words.
David Brooks -
Wish I were an old boy, an old white boy, an old white Protestant boy, and old white Protestant prep school boy. When men were men and women were chivaled about. What an ignorant arrogant mean spirited column with a pretense of gentility that never was. Twerp.
Posted by: lise on September 13, 2003 02:31 PM"To use the Times' precious real estate for these kinds of trivial observations (and written in a cutesy, never-really-completely-serious tone which I detest) -- while the fate of the world might truly hang in the balance -- is disgraceful in my view."
One would think that Arthur Silber would be annoyed by Maureen Dowd, then, but he clearly isn't. Could it be that "trivial observations" annoy him only when they're made on the *wrong* side of the political aisle?
Posted by: Abiola Lapite on September 13, 2003 02:32 PMMitch Schlinder
Interesting comment.
David Brooks column makes perfect sense in light of the love affair with the pseudo-sociology of Charles "Bell Curve" Murray.
Posted by: Emma on September 13, 2003 02:35 PMYeah Abiola, being a libertarian you should see how Arthur Silber loves Dowd. A little crow with your ad hominem?
Posted by: Rob on September 13, 2003 02:40 PMWe REALLY need to STOP talking and thinking about George W. Bush. He doesn't deserve it. He is ectoplasm. Who we need to be thinking and talking about--and that, in the baldest and least varnished terms--are that half of the American people whose ignorance and sadism he so perfectly represents.
Posted by: Frank Wilhoit on September 13, 2003 02:45 PMMureen Dowd and Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are wonderful gems.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11DOWD.html
I've actually gotten to the point where I hope Dick Cheney is embroiled in a Clancyesque conspiracy to benefit Halliburton. Because if it's not a conspiracy, it's naïveté and ideology. And that means our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk....
Testifying before the Senate on Tuesday on the $87 billion request, Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon official who pushed so hard to own Iraq and control it, said, "We have no desire to own this problem or to control it." There may not be much choice, given Colin Powell's pessimistic warning to Congress yesterday that no allies want to help us pick up the tab for rebuilding a country full of people who revile us....
Posted by: Emma on September 13, 2003 02:49 PMMureen Dowd is tough and fair as can be. How the radical rightee rights fear tough and fair and female.
Posted by: lise on September 13, 2003 02:57 PM"I'm no David Brooks defender, but you guys are all missing his point. He is saying that the Protestant Establishment explicitly bred leaders, whereas our post-Protest Establishment culture makes them, through ability and accomplishment. This is a pretty clear distinction, one that Brooks himself could have perhaps made more clearly, though I think in context it is fairly lucid."
Yes, I believe that Brooks has the fond belief that our society is highly meritocratic.
The problem with the Bush story, however is that Bush has repeatedly benefited from the non-meritocratic aspects of our society. Given a strong meritocracy, where would he be?
Posted by: Barry on September 13, 2003 03:21 PM"Yeah Abiola, being a libertarian you should see how Arthur Silber loves Dowd. A little crow with your ad hominem?"
Do you really understand what "ad hominem" means? And even if Silber really IS a "libertarian", as you claim (and I won't take your word for it, given your evidently poor understanding of the English language), that still doesn't let him off the charge of being selective in his criticisms. It STILL seems to be the case that what he doesn't like is the social conservatism inherent in David Brooks' views - a POLITICAL issue, as I said before.
It's really quite straightforward, my simple-minded friend: the intersection between the set of views held by "libertarians" and "liberals" is NOT the empty set, nor are the set of views held by "libertarians" and "conservatives" identical. It's perfectly possible for a libertarian to bash a conservative but not a liberal for perfectly ideological reasons. Are you still with me, amigo?
Posted by: Abiola Lapite on September 13, 2003 03:35 PM"The dominant view is closer, say, to this one--from the Carlyle Group...."
The dominant view-- where? Not in the country at large, certainly. You're straying into Pauline "No one I know voted for Nixon" Kael territory here, Brad. For God's sake get out of Berkeley before you lose contact with reality altogether!
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek on September 13, 2003 04:21 PMBrooks may have had a "point", but my problem with the column is the high level of transparent dishonesty mixed in with the smarm. Consider the paragraph:
" Both, impressively, adapted to the new society. Dean married a Jewish doctor, raises his kids as Jews, lives in Burlington, Vt., and has become WASP king of the peaceniks. Bush moved to Midland, Tex., became a Methodist, went to work in the oil business and has become WASP king of the Nascar dads. "
and then think about the significance of the elisions.
Also note that Bush "works" in the oil business, while Dean "marries" a doctor.
This was a clumsy, partisan, hack piece, and the NYT should be ashamed of its poor quality.
Posted by: John A on September 13, 2003 04:41 PMI can believe that the idea of "Bred to Power" is appealing to people who dislike uncertainty, but it isn't plausible that a meritocratic elite has no possibility of a dramatic, tragic fall. Napoleon and many of his Marshals, as counterexample; Spartacus; Becky Sharpe. For that matter, once Coriolanus or Alcibiades or Samson have the power to shake the city gates, anything they do is dramatic.
I'd be more convinced that there was a psychological need for certainty if it didn't mostly come from people prepped to be leaders or their closer lackeys.
Now, why the US is so enthralled with "Bred to Power" that it can swallow the hereditary senator from Narboo, or whatever the current Star Wars movies have... that's just a woe and a pain to me.
Posted by: clew on September 13, 2003 04:46 PMUmmmm. I thought this was one of Brooks's better pieces. It was, I think, intended as an attack on Dean. Further, an attack on Dean for qualities he more or less shares with Bush. For a Republican to attack Dean for qualities that he shares with Bush and not have the piece read as an attack on Bush requires considerable rhetorical skill. It seems to me that one can admire Brooks's rhetorical skills without necessarily taking him or his Claritas-level pop sociology seriously: it's always a pleasure to watch a good boy work. And I did like his sentence which said the Bushes couldn't be socially unsound because Dean's grandmother had invited Bush's grandmother to be her bridesmaid. There are at least two layers of irony there.
All politics is domestic. No one adduces an external threat to America except as a coded proxy for an internal threat. Every American believes that the *real* threat is within. Every political statement refers exclusively to the Cold Civil War that has been underway since, at latest, the late 1970s, and arguably much longer. External entities or notions such as "Communism" "terrorism" are, in every case, merely allegories for domestic factions. Every American hates the other half of America more than he hates, or loves, any other thing. This is THE problem. This is the ball off which we must not take our eye. Every attempt to gloss it over or redefine it leads to greater confusion and wasted effort.
Wake me up when anyone wants to face up to this or try to understand how it came about.
Posted by: Frank Wilhoit on September 13, 2003 05:44 PMI also took it as just a straight slam on Dean. Ostensibly, pointing out his blue-blood roots, there in the pages of the left's newsletter, might alienate a few of the Deaniacs.
Other than that, I didn't take much from it. He believes that we live in a meritocracy. Yeah, somewhat. He believes that the days of the aristocracy are gone. Well, no, as is evidenced by his own example of presidential candidates.
It was just politics. Yawn. And I say that as a political junkie. Isn't anyone anywhere conducting a good-faith attempt to find what works in public policy (like economics at its best) or trying to find out what is right (like philosophy - as it exists only in my mind, probably). Everyone seems content to just score points for their team.
I think maybe there's something like the security dilemma (or arms race) going on in politics. If you try to be sensible, and anyone on the other side is more vitriolic, you have to raise your rhetoric to match or else lose the stage in our media/society. I'm sure it's been worse before, but it bums me out a bit. Makes me wanna take my marbles and go home. :)
Posted by: andrew on September 13, 2003 05:52 PMThis article is about Bush bashing. The bottom line is, He was the lesser of two evils when he was elected. Since 9/11, he has proved that he will execute the governments job of defending the Nation!!! None of the Democrats running for office have yet to prove themselves, nor do they look or sound like they will do as good a job of defending the country as Bush has already proven himself to do. As for the Economy; Between him and Greenspan, they have just about done everything that can be done (without calling an economical call to arms). The economical crash of 2000 and the comming recession of 04/5, just have to run the course. What I hope and pray for, after Bush is reelected; Is for him to cut/eliminate every unnessary government department (see Allen Keys) and cut lots and lots of sen. and con. waist of government/tax payers money. These budjet cuts that I'm talking about would have no impact on the total economy.
Posted by: Jim Coomes on September 13, 2003 06:44 PMNice sideline on various management techniques and how they can be interpreted. I’d say that I understand Brad’s interpretation, but I can’t really agree. Being an ass is indeed a rather bad management technique, but just because your boss is asking you to lay out your thought patterns, your data and your conclusions doesn’t make him an idiot. Is your boss being analytical or in over his head?
At a certain level of organization you have to hire and depend on people with more subject area expertise. You yourself may have considerable expertise in certain areas, but a leader’s job is not to know it all, his job is to make an organization more effective and communicate a top-level vision, the amount of work needed to get there, the subsequent reward and ensure the appropriate amount of follow-through.
Not that I’m saying that Bush actually has any of these qualities.
My first take on Brooks was that beneath his convoluted message on breeding elites, his goal was to take Dean down a notch in a way designed to hurt him for Democratic primary voters
Why and why now?
Posted by: Bhash on September 13, 2003 07:17 PMI agree that the intent of the piece was to smear Dean. Can you really compare Dean's accomplishments on his own to Bush's? No, and it's disingenuous of Brooks to compare Dean spurning the life of privelege bestowed upon him and going to medical school versus Bush parlaying his name into sweetheart deal after sweetheart deal. Yes, they both gave up drinking, but Dean, as far as I know, was never an acoholic and Bush was, and in addition almost certainly did cocaine.
clew - What you said was right, in a way, but look at your examples. Napoleon, Spartacus, Coriolanus? This really belongs on a blog I don't have, but concomitant to the rise of the meritocrat is the limiting of the power of our leaders; the two go hand in hand. The reasons why Hamlet and Coriolanus are dramatic is that they have such powers that their lives and decisions have a profound impact over many others. As time goes by and we become more meritocratic, we constrain leaders through rules and regulations. General Tommy Franks could never get away with being a Napoleon. In addition, were Napoleon to have died in, say 1805, events would have been completely different, and there could not have been a replacement in the true sense. If Eisenhower had died during WWII for some reason, someone else would have taken his place - the chain of command - and that person's tasks would have been the same and so would have been his positional limitations.
If you read Plato's Republic, this isn't hard to infer when he does his rundown on the different forms of government. Why is aristocracy better than monarachy? Because monarchies have more power and so a bad monarch is worse than a bad aristocracy. Why is democracy better than aristocracy? Because aristocracies have more power and so a bad aristocracy is worse than a bad democracy. From Runnymede to the Treaty of Westphalia to the Constitution, we are gradually eroding the power of our leaders. Our country was founded for just that purpose, in a way. The thing is, as you decrease the deterministic force of those in power, you make the dramatic notion of a single individual living with the fate of the world or a nation on his shoulders more and more far-fetched. And Bush has a lot of power compared to some other world leaders, no?
Posted by: Mitch Schindler on September 13, 2003 07:32 PMWhat a weird set of comments, even ignoring the duplicates. :-) OK, so I do have one nit to pick:
I'm glad that strong leaders can come from the ranks of non-WASPs, but I think it's a bit of a reach to name Bill Gates in the same breath as Rubin and Powell here.
Yes, Bill Gates was basically moving under his own power from the time he left Harvard, unlike (say) George Bush, and he didn't go to an Eastern Prep School. Gates did, however, come from a prominent Seattle family and did go to a prominent private school, a place called Lakeside School:
http://www.lakesideschool.org/
So maybe it's not Phillips-Exeter, but Bill Gates did not, as the saying goes, come up from dirt.
The Brooks piece is pretty wacky. On the one hand, I think there's some value in reminding people that the upcoming election looks like it will be between 2 rich white men who are running away from their prep backgrounds (whether Kerry or Dean wins the nomination). But then everything else is so fawning or downright weird; I can't *believe* he used the word "darling" in his opening. Feh!
So again, I'm still not sure why David Brooks was the answer to the question "Who shall next write a column for the Paper of Record?" If anybody has insight into this, I'm sure he or she won't be shy.
Posted by: Jonathan King on September 13, 2003 07:49 PMHaving read the post and these comments before reading the piece you could consider he damned both with faint praise:
"Both went through their Prince Hal phases."
...
"As anyone who has read George Orwell knows, this had ruinous effects on some boys, but those who thrived, as John F. Kennedy did, believed that life was a knightly quest to perform service and achieve greatness, through virility, courage, self-discipline and toughness."
A long Prince Hal phase doesn't seem to be thriving to me.
Posted by: rdb on September 13, 2003 08:51 PMYou cannot think about these comments without the context of Clinton or even Bush41. Either of these guys knew enough of the details to engage their staff. Brad is looking for reasons why the ideologues have captured the policy in the Bush 43 administration. Clearly Bush43 is not up to the task. Can we really afford another 4 years of this buffoon???
Posted by: bakho on September 13, 2003 08:52 PM"Even if Silber really IS a "libertarian", as you claim ... that still doesn't let him off the charge of being selective in his criticisms."
Abiola, if the only basis for the 'charge' is that there is one piece in which Silber criticizes Brooks without simultaneously criticizing Dowd, then I doubt that any reasonable person would take the charge seriously to start with.
Or, if "criticizing a party on one side for one fault, without balancing it by concurrently criticizing someone on the other side who is guilty of the same fault" really *is* prima facie evidence of "selective criticism," then you are clearly guilty of the same fault, since you just criticized Silber for practicing selective criticism without concurrently criticizing any blogger on the right who also practices selective criticism.
Posted by: Jeffrey Kramer on September 13, 2003 09:10 PMI'm wondering why my initial comment was removed. I've seen much worse stuff in the comments section of this website. I'm not inclined to think it was intentional. Strange indeed.
Posted by: Mitch Schindler on September 13, 2003 09:22 PM[should have been "clearly liable to the same indictment" instead of "clearly guilty of the same fault" in my previous post]
Posted by: Jeffrey Kramer on September 13, 2003 10:29 PMMitch Schlinder
The guess is accident. Unless I am "hard of reading" there was no offense. Probably a mistaken editing of double post. We really do wish for the days of kings and queens, I think, was the gist. David Brooks certainly has been wishing for the days of kings [queens have been offered no place]. Such snootiness is comical.
Posted by: Ari on September 14, 2003 09:38 AM"For God's sake get out of Berkeley before you lose contact with reality altogether!"
Posted by Paul Zrimsek
Yeah, Brad, go to Alabama or Idaho or one of those other places where people really know what's going on. You've spent too long in that sump of mediocrity.
Posted by: zizka on September 14, 2003 02:41 PMMitch - To summarize: your argument is not that power is dramatically compelling if inherited, but not if won; rather that we don't distinguish between meritocracy and its usual balance of power, and balanced power can't be as dramatic as solitary power?
Okay, that at least explains Harry Potter, etc etc.
It doesn't explain why anyone with a clue wants to live in reality at the mercy of fallible kings - A' babbled of green fields. Maybe we need more of those T-shirts with the picture "Hey - What if I'm not the main character?"
Posted by: clew on September 14, 2003 05:34 PM