It's so unlike him when he says "It’s not the best time for people like me.” I disagree, we need him more than ever. I have learnt so much from him, he has become the teacher I never had. Well... stating this for the nth time, I am a big fan of David Brooks (and hence I am not biased) - A Reasonable Man. Here's why:
1."Brooks’s charming, levelheaded optimism may be out of style. But he gets to play the voice of reason against a chorus of doomsayers. His moderate conservatism—a synthesis of conservative giant Edmund Burke and Ur-centralizer Alexander Hamilton that has earned him the label of “liberals’ favorite conservative”—may be anomalous, but it allows him a kind of freedom that other, more partisan pundits lack. He’s a party of one, without followers. This is Brooks’s central paradox: He’s both the essential columnist of the moment, better than anyone at crystallizing the questions we face—ones for which there are often no good answers—and also, somehow, totally out of step."
2. At The Week’s opinion-journalism awards dinner in 2009, where Brooks was being honored, Axelrod made the love affair explicit, praising him as a “true public thinker” amid the “insipid, instant commentary and one-hour news cycles.”
3. For the last three years, Brooks has been researching and writing a book on neuroscience. At least that’s his shorthand for it. It’s basically about how unconscious processes in short, emotions shape our behavior, and what that means for public policy, all told through the stories of two composite, pseudo-novelistic characters. (A working title was How Success Happens, but he dismissed it as too Gladwellian.) Good policy, he argues, should understand that people make decisions emotionally, not rationally. It should also try to foster good habits with communitarian solutions like pre-K education, or zoning laws to prevent Wal-Marts from taking over neighborhoods. In other words, says Brooks, the more contact with other people, the better.
4. Consistency is not one of Brooks’s hobgoblins; he has no qualms about changing his mind. His list of reversals is testament to his intellectual flexibility?or flabbiness, depending on your angle. His view of suburbia has dimmed, based on his new appreciation for communitarianism. Back in 2008, he strongly opposed the bailout of GM. I might have been wrong about that, he says. And of course there’s Iraq. As late as 2007, he called Iraq one of the noblest endeavors the United States, or any great power, has ever undertaken. He knew the war was profoundly anti-Burkean. But it suited his quest for national greatness a gauzy vision of conservatism he and Kristol had been pushing since 1997. It was an unfortunate deviation from my core philosophy, he says.
5. Every column is a failure, says Brooks. I always wish I did something different. Part of the problem is the format. There’s only so much you can do with 800 words. I’m a 3,000-word person, he says.
Plus Brooks just isn’t that opinionated. I look at Andrew Sullivan or Jonathan Chait, churning out opinions, he says.I don’t have that many. Brooks’s goal isn’t to change minds, he says. Do I expect someone with View X on a policy, and I argue View Anti-X, that somehow they’re gonna totally change their mind. I don’t think I’ve ever had that effect on anybody. He can strengthen and highlight certain feelings, he says. But that’s about it. Brooks never fights back. Getting dirty just isn’t his style. As David Frum puts it, He has a kind of serenity. He has no enmity in him. He sees things with a bemused eye, says Richard Brookhiser, who worked with him at National Review. I would say maybe too much so. But it also spares him from a lot of craziness. Serenity is part of the Brooks brand.
6. And the greatest lessons he learnt?
Politics is cyclical, of course. Extremism will die down. Republicans will moderate. Democrats will bump up against the checks and balances of the democratic system. But the fundamental trends that haunt Brooks the looming deficit, polarization, distrust of government aren’t going away. I’m naturally an extremely optimistic person, he says. But I’m more pessimistic now than ever in my life. There are limits to what one person can do about these things, be he a columnist or a president. So maybe it’s best not to get too worked up.
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