David Brooks isn't thrilled by the pick

[Hamlette]

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

snip

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

snip

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02brooks.html?hp

He doesn't really trash her, but he doesn't think she's a good pick for VP

[Muttocracy]

1. he was drooling over her in the first part. It's all a bit of an ironic post

I never know what to make of David Brooks. It's kind of like he comes up with an interesting thesis and writes about it rather than having an internal philosophy himself!

[Bread and Circus]

2. I read that. It was an incoherent, internally self-defeating, self-contradictory pile of bullshit

...and it seemed as if it were written in some bizarre bubble before all the shit has hit the fan in the last 24 hours.

Brooks has zero credibility with me. He's a dickhead anyways.

[grantcart]

3. and those were the good points