[lbo-talk] Brooks: Combat Prudentialism!

[Carl Remick]

>From: Brad Mayer <Bradley.Mayer at Sun.COM>
>
>Wacko NYT OpEd columnist DAVID BROOKS shows that the American political
>psychosis is regime-wide and is hardly limited to the Bush gang.  And it
>includes Kerry, with whom Brooks is delighted.
>
>Except for one little problem:
>
>"The one big problem they are not addressing — and are actually making
>worse — is the creepy tone of prudentialism that envelops this campaign.
>Nobody is passionate about John Kerry. Primary voters embraced him in a
>calculating frame of mind. Party leaders talk about him ambivalently.
>Even Kerry seems coolly calculating about himself."
>
>"He has not communicated a consuming sense of mission that emanates from
>the soul and transcends political self-interest. You can position a
>candidate intelligently, and the Democrats are doing that. You cannot
>fake that sense of historic calling that actually inspires people."

Absolutely, you especially can't project a "sense of historic calling that 
actually inspires people" if you have Wall St. generalissimo Robert Rubin 
constantly popping up at Kerry's side like the Woody Allen character Leonard 
Zelig.  My favorite passage from Brooks' column is this:  "While Ted 
Kennedy's people still dominate the organizational and rhetorical parts of 
the campaign, the policy shop has been turned over to the Rubinites — the 
superintelligent Clinton administration alumni who, if they were a little 
more demonstrative, would gather at mass rallies waving Robert Rubin's 
little blue books of fiscal rectitude and chanting the inspiring slogans 
that spread frenzy in the bond markets: 'Cut the Deficits! Lower Rates! Cut 
the Deficits! Lower Rates!'"

Recently, I saw quintessential Washington-insider journalist Albert Hunt 
burbling approvingly on TV about Rubin's prominent position on the Kerry 
team, saying that "the adults" are back running the Democratic party.  Of 
course when you come right down to it, when did the fucking "adults" ever 
stop running the Dems?

Carl

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