The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued II)

In my last commentary entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)," which I urge the reader to re-read, as well as the start of this analysis entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward" I concluded with a quote from the Center for Policy Research on the Ryan budget and the James B. Stewart article defending it:

We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.

Then again we have another so-called New York Times “centrist” columnist, David Brooks, whose many fulminations have long ago turned me off. I gave up on him many years ago when he advocated what he called a “flat/fair tax” which to me was, and is, an oxymoron. By definition, for the rich and the poor to pay the same tax can never be fair, though I have since then come to wonder whether our present system, isn’t even worse, with the lower earners paying a higher % of their income than the rich.

In any case here is Brooks' “centrist” take on the Ryan plan. He admits:

The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility. Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors.

But then having said that, he gets to what really upsets him, and it isn’t the outrages of the Ryan plan. Instead he rips into the President for criticizing its (The Ryan Plan’s) “real deficit-reducing accomplishments” (My careful reading of the plan does not reveal any such accomplishments unless you count the unspecified cuts in expenditures, and even then there is not one iota of an increase in revenue) as “trickle-down, … social Darwinists.” To be sure that is strong language, but that hardly makes it inappropriate, for a document that devastates our social safety net and severely cuts taxes for the rich. Mr. Brooks takes particular exception to the term “Social Darwinist” describing it as, as “a 19th-century philosophy that held, in part, that Aryans and Northern Europeans are racially superior to brown and Mediterranean peoples.” That may be the way it was once used, but Brooks should, and undoubtedly does know, that its meaning in 20^th century America is as The Atlantic describes it:  

“a term in Richard Hofstadter's 1944 book ‘Social Darwinism in American Thought’ which correctly describes it as a ‘phase in the history of conservative thought’ where ‘nature would provide that the best competitors in a competitive situation would win, and that this process would lead to continuing improvement.”

As we can see Brooks’ attack on the President is ad homonym and without foundation. But that is the way of the so-called middle.

But Mr. Brooks is such a symbol of this so-called middle (I call it a phony middle) that I have to dwell a little longer on Brooks’ writing. As early as June 13, 2011 in an article headed “Pundit Under Protest” he writes, as is his wont, with such an evenness, without regard to facts, as to make the article pathetic. Like any politician without principle, only worse, he knows that his audience likes to hear that there is no difference between the parties. He tries to oblige. He starts out by identifying the malaise that has gripped the country. He writes:

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. [Emphasis added]

           

Mr. Brooks states a crucial fact, without focusing on a crucial date: 1983. What happened in 1983? Well nothing in particular, except that it was the second year of the Administration of Ronald Reagan, when the country was set upon a dramatic new course, with the mantra being from then on: “ Government is not the Solution – Government is the Problem” and for the next 38 years, except for first two years of the Clinton Administration, that was the guiding principle of our government. It does not follow, that these polices were the cause of the condition that Brooks describes, but one would think that a discussion of that possibility might have been in order. But never mind that. Let’s see what else he says.

Here is what he says about the Republican agenda:

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefying boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible… Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.

Well so far so good! But of course, being Brooks there is always, “On the other hand.” So here is what he says about Democrats.

…they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels!... They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won’t be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare. (Emphasis added)

Boy, what an indictment. But is it true? It may be true of some of the base, but it is not true of the Obama Administration and it is not true of the Democratic Party’s program. It is a contrived caricature. Let us take Medicare. The President proposed and Congressional Democrats passed over almost unanimous Republican opposition $132 billion worth of cuts from Medicare Advantage over 10 years, for which Republicans have been denouncing them as having taking money out of Medicare, if one can believes the hypocrisy. (I am not here going to discuss the merits or lack thereof here – but cite it simply to belie Brooks.)

In addition, months before Brooks falsely alleged that Democrats were unwilling to touch Medicare, in March of 2012 Obama offered as part of a deficit reduction deal with Speaker Boehner, just that, or as the New York Times reported:

The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade.

The offered deal included revenue enhancements, and fell apart when Boehner could not sell that part to his Tea Party-dominated Republican House caucus.

But how can Brooks, say, (with a straight face) “by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.” The answer can only be that Brooks is no more concerned with facts than the Republicans who he is always defending, or at least falsely equating with a President and a party that is actually trying to do something.

As for Brooks’ assertion that “…they offer practically nothing,” “'Let's look at the record” in the immortal words of Al Smith: Mr. Brooks does not have to look at what has been proposed, just at what has been achieved, which because of Republican obstructionism is much less than what has been proposed. See the accomplishments as of November 25, 2009 here.

More has been accomplished since then, but of course upon the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Democrats and the President lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate. With a unanimous Republican determination that nothing will pass with less than 60 votes – which means a vote of 59 in favor, 41 against, or even 35 against, defeats a bill, not much more can be accomplished, and with Republicans capturing the House, gridlock is the order of the day. But here again the suggestion that both parties are at fault for not being willing to compromise, belies the facts. Even tax cuts proposed by the Administration, are blocked, even though the Republican mantra is that tax cuts are always good, but I guess they mean only for the rich.

But Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, isn’t much better. He thinks that the solution to all our problems is a third party. See my discussion entitled "The Media And Their Columnists."

We will never solve any problems if we constantly seek a false equivalency between the parties, or seek magic from outside them. Let the facts take us where they may, but let us not indulge in a false delusion in an effort not to have to choose. That leaves as either not voting, or voting on the basis of Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, or throwing our vote away on a third party.

But before I close this subject I must examine one more column by Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation than at clarification.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.