Brooks Gets Obama Wrong

I read David Brooks' latest puff piece in The New York Times on President Obama.

Describing Obama as "a center-left pragmatic reformer" he claims "conservatives are wrong to call him a big-government liberal." How exactly does adding nearly $10 trillion to the national debt this decade make Obama "a center-left pragmatic reformer"? Brooks declares this development "the greatest moral challenge of our day" and by his own admission he deems Obama's response to it as "inadequate."

It is difficult for me to take Brooks seriously when he claims Obama "moderately tinkers with the status quo" when it comes to health care reform. I would hardly characterize the government takeover of one sixth of our economy as an act of moderate tinkering.

It's also difficult for me to take Brooks seriously when he writes passages such as, "He always uses the same on-the-one-hand-on-the-other sentence structure. Government should address problems without interfering with the dynamism of the market." If Brooks honestly thinks the government takeover of the banks, auto industry and now health care hasn't changed the dynamism of the market then he is truly insulated from the real world and its consequences.