David Brooks: Sarah Palin "Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party"

E-mailed to me | October 8, 2008 | Danny Shea

[publius1]

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer to the Republican party" but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as "the two best candidates we've had in a long time."

In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Brooks praised Palin's natural political talent, but said she is "absolutely not" ready to be president or vice president. He explained, "The more I follow politicians, the more I think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot, because believe me, once in office there's no time to think or make decisions."

The New York Times columnist also said that the "great virtue" of Palin's counterpart, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is that he is anything but a "yes man."

"[Biden] can't not say what he thinks," Brooks remarked. "There's no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that's tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn't have anybody like that."

Brooks also spent time praising Obama's intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him "dazzled":

Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be "a very mediocre senator," he was is surrounded by what Brooks called "by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party."

"He's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team," Brooks said. "I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive."

[mapmaker77]

Brooks speaks with the unintentienal insularity of the MSM elite, and doesn't seem to understand that some old fashioned common sense will win every time.

[CaliforniaCon]

RE: “David Brooks being his eastern elite catty metrosexual self.”

You sure that’s just “metro” and not “homo?” He sure seems like the latter to me .... not that there’s anything wrong with that (ha)

[HawaiianGecko]

If Obama is so smart, how did he come to the conclusion that going into Iraq was a bad thing?  Did he have daily briefings from the CIA?  Did he have daily briefings from the NSA?  Did he have the intelligence agencies and leaders of all countries in the Security Council of the United Nations agreeing with Bush that Iraq was a potential danger? 

I doubt it. In 2002 he was a bumbling local politician in Illinois.  He probably didn't even have accurate readings on the local Chinese restaurant's take out menu.

You simply cannot take the known information in October 2002 and come to any conclusion other than the one that President Bush, VP Cheney, President Clinton, Senator Clinton, Senator Rockefeller, and a list of 75 other senators and 300+ congressmen came to.  You cannot find a Karnaugh map or a series of logic gates anywhere on the planet that would have come up with a different scenario.

So how did Obama miss it by so much?  His critical thinking ability is simply flawed and right now American are dumb enough to put him in office.

[Uncle Miltie]

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer to the Republican party" but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as "the two best candidates we've had in a long time."

No wonder he's the captive pet "conservative" of the MSM.

[9YearLurker]

That’s really rich: David Brooks talking about Sarah Palin’s ‘prejudices’ (after he’s concluded she is a yahoo with no interest in ideas).

[kabar]

Sarah Palin has accomplished more in her life and had more of impact on the lives of others than David Brooks could ever dream of. Let him engage in his mastrabatory prose sitting in the clouds above the masses. Who gives a crap about him or his ilk? They are the ones who are a cancer on the GOP.

[Radix]

[Terrence DoGood]

In his dreams. Sarah Palin may just be the one (with all of us) dragging McCain over the victory line

[rob777]

"Brooks is definitely hallucinating."


Sarah is a MAJOR threat to his "Governing Conservatism" rejection of the traditional Reagan style limited government conservatism. If she becomes the new face of the party it surely will not be going down the path he has been advocating and he will become even more irrelevant than he is now.

[dynachrome]

Gay wannabees like Brooks hate strong women.

[Yo-Yo]

David Brooks has spewed this crap before. Brooks on Face the Nation last Sunday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGosn7ceuu0

[Terrence DoGood]

I agree. If we want to read that garbage all we have to do go to any msm website

[Fred]

Brooks is making the mistake that anybody actually gives a rat’s arse what he thinks.

[Friendofgeorge]

Brooks, Scarborough,Carlson(tucker), George Will,Noonan etc, are all Pieces of crap...Sorry somebody had to say it.

[television is just wrong]

LOL, that just cracks me up. She has a spine and they don’t like it.

[Checkers]

See post #38

Minus_The_Bear says: “Romney and his supporters are scum.”

What do you say?

[Artemis Webb]

What shade of lipstick is that?

[Poincare]

David Brooks is a little hairy wart, easily excised.

[webrover]

"Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?"

Is that a common pick up line in fag bars?

[clintonh8r]

"The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant...."

Gosh, one hardly knows where to begin...