Ok, which one of you wise asses kidnapped Brooks....

[Aviation Pro]

...and replaced him with a thinking person?

Link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16brooks.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Why Experience Matters

By DAVID BROOKS

Philosophical debates arise at the oddest times, and in the heat of this election season, one is now rising in Republican ranks. The narrow question is this: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president? Most conservatives say yes, on the grounds that something that feels so good could not possibly be wrong. But a few commentators, like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat demur, suggesting in different ways that she is unready.

The issue starts with an evaluation of Palin, but does not end there. This argument also is over what qualities the country needs in a leader and what are the ultimate sources of wisdom.

There was a time when conservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.

But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.

*snip*

I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.

And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.

What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.

How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.

Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.

[ananda]

1. Too little too late.

If people were having serious and frequent public conversations about Bush's obvious lack of qualification, we wouldn't be having this one.

[Warpy]

2. Face it, this was a lunatic choice by a desperate old man

who said he'd take whoever the preachers offered him, no questions asked.

Most of the old timers in the party are aghast at this ignorant woman, aghast that she was shoved ahead of experienced, competent party women and party men, alike.

Plus, that screeching reminds them of unpleasant female relatives, I'm sure.

[Richard Steele]

5. None of the COMPETENT Repubs want anything to do with McCain.

They know perfectly well he's bound for a landslide loss.

Palin was the only Repub dumb enough to take the job.

[madeline_con]

6. "... unpleasant female relatives..."

Indeed! I think a lot of the "polls" are the MSM rying to convince the sheeple to go along with the imagined herd (flock).

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Damn, the hours of lovely discussion worked

Didn't think it would.... left him alone with water and bread... and a pad of paper.

:evilgrin:

[MadMaddie]

4. This is the most important sentence to me!

<snip>
Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders.
<snip>

I don't want an average leader. I don't want a leader that came in almost last in his class. I don't want a VP that is so simple minded that she thinks seeing Russia gives her world experience...that's all.

[cui bono]

7. If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

New McCain/Palin theme song.

[ColbertWatcher]

8. I'll take credit if no one else will. n/t

[Orrex]

9. Any writer who uses the word "rigidified" should be catapulted

However, this bit is remarkably good:

She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.

[Hekate]

10. Bless his pointy little head.

I've always liked David Brooks. He and Mark Shields go well together on the News Hour, and it's been kind of fun watching him squirm ever more uncomfortably as this maladministration has proven its inherent worthlessness over and over. He is one of the real conservatives who have been betrayed -- and now he knows it fully, and is articulating it.

Hekate

[Hekate]

11. Here's an important point from the rest of the article, re: populism...

I think the following explains her potential crossover appeal better than anything else I've read. Note: we have a lot of populists on our side as well. (Brooks' example about the term-limits movement is telling, because here in California enough people went for it that now we are living with the unhappy results.) Somehow, I think we ignore this observation at our peril.

Hekate

> But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge
> is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.
>
>The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct.
>
> This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the belief that time in government destroys character but contact with grass-roots
> America gives one grounding in real life. And now it has produced Sarah Palin.
>
> Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers
> take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. ...
>
> Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious,
> one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.