David Brooks on Barack Obama (finally says something smart, sort of)

[warrens]

Barack Obama should run for president.

He should run first for the good of his party. It would demoralize the Democrats to go through a long primary season with the most exciting figure in the party looming off in the distance like some unapproachable dream. The next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come from defeating Barack Obama.

Second, he should run because of his age. Obama's inexperience is his most obvious shortcoming. Over the next four years, the world could face a genocidal civil war in Iraq, a wave of nuclear proliferation, more Islamic extremism and a demagogues' revolt against globalization. Do we really want a forty-something in the White House?

And yet in his new book, ''The Audacity of Hope,'' Obama makes a strong counterargument. He notes that it's time to move beyond the political style of the baby boom generation. This is a style, he said in an interview late Tuesday, that is highly moralistic and personal, dividing people between who is good and who is bad.

Obama himself has a mentality formed by globalization, not the S.D.S. With his multiethnic family and his globe-spanning childhood, there is a little piece of everything in Obama. He is perpetually engaged in an internal discussion between different pieces of his hybrid self -- Kenya with Harvard, Kansas with the South Side of Chicago -- and he takes that conversation outward into the world.

This is from the NY Times Premium, so I can't link. The rest of the article sort of peters out, but I think he has a good point here. Obama is something different.

[TomClash]

1. Always take Neo-con advice

with a grain of salt.

[RandomKoolzip]

2. Yes, I'm sure David Brooks has only the good of the Democratic Party

at heart. What a thoughtful little sweetie. :eyes:

[Gabi Hayes]

3. exactly....he knows this country is so ffffing racist that it would

excite the deeply trog wing of the pugparty to get out the KKK vote, which would dwarf the religious nut vote

[Eric J in MN]

5. Yes, if David Brooks believed Barck Obama could win in 2008,

...then he wouldn't be urging him to run.

The point of this article (besides Brooks' fantasy of the Democrats nominating someone he's sure would lose) is to bash people who support regulating trade with protections for workers and the environment.

[Demeter]

4. You Don't Think He Meant This Seriously, Do You?

The sarcasm, the knife, is not concealed. He is showing complete contempt for Obama, the Democrats, anybody who doesn't think Dubya is the sun.

[Gabi Hayes]

7. I don't know how anybody can stand to look at/listen to/read ONE THING

that sneering sycophant ever issues from his purulent piepit

just a mendacious no talent Tom Wolfe wannabe

[Connie_Corleone]

6. I don't read anything "smart" in what he wrote.

Did you read it carefully?

[warrens]

8. My reading comprehension is just fine

He said Obama is something new in politics, even if his policies aren't. I spent four days covering Obama in 2004, and in every town, about a third of the mob there to hear him was Repuke. If you can pry the reasonable ones away from the nazis, you have an unbeatable candidate. As Obama turned out to be when he absolutely CREAMED the Repuke Keyes, taking all but one county in Illinois.

The kneejerk reactions here are kind of amusing. Brooks likes him, therefore he must be evil. Hilarious.

[Connie_Corleone]

9. "He likes Obama, so Brooks must be evil" ??

I must be evil because I like Obama too.

:wtf:

No one said anything about Brooks being evil because he likes Obama. We're saying that brooks doesn't give a damn about Obama and thinks if he's the nominee then the Republicans can beat him.

(I support Obama running for president. I think he can win. Brooks opinion is worthless.)