[From the diaries by susanhu w minor edit.]
It was a Friday evening, September 23, 2005. The program was Public Broadcasting Services New Hour; Jim Lehrer was the host. The topic was Katrina. What was the cost of the storm, and what of the monies President George W. Bush promised for rebuilding?
Jim Lehrer introduced the subject by saying that reports reveal the “conservatives are upset;” they do not think the Bush proposals are wise. Lehrer posed the question, what do Republicans intend to do with their frustrations? Lehrer turned to conservative syndicated columnist David Brooks for the answer.
Brooks, in an honest moment, muttered the words, “George Bush has spent money at a faster clip than Lyndon Johnson.” Hearing this utterance from David Brooks was so shocking to newscaster Lehrer, he was visibly taken aback. Mr. Lehrer said, with a noticeable lilt in his voice, “Say that again.”
Brooks rapidly replied, “Domestic discretionary spending, non-defense spending, non-homeland security spending has increased.” He added, spending “has increased under George W. Bush twice as fast as under Bill Clinton, and faster than under Lyndon Baines Johnson.”
Brooks continued, “Conservatives didn’t expect that in 2000. I guarantee you that. A lot of it is, frankly, the Republican Congress’s fault.”
Wow! A registered right-winger is saying that the Republicans are at fault. What happened to “eleventh commandment” as voiced by super President Ronald Reagan? I thought that conservatives were never supposed to criticize members of their own party. Yet, it occurred, here on television. Anyone or everyone could be watching! What will party loyalists think, say, or do? Granted, the increasing debt and the constant spending troubles many. Yet, to speak of it aloud and publicly, this was quite a feat.
New York Times writer David Brooks persisted, “If you look back, when we look back on this period, we are going to look at a Congress that came [in] preaching limited government, but just has gone hog-wild in spending.”
`Tis true. Nonetheless, who would have expected to hear these words from this well-known conservative columnist? Brooks reflected further saying, we have “a president who never disciplined members of his own party to restrain themselves.” Mr. Brooks proclaimed, “There’s just a lot of built-up anger . . .
It was a glorious moment. Though Brooks went on to propose standard Republican policies, this moment will forever be etched in time, in my memory, and I wanted to share it with you.
You might enjoy, A Bushian Laboratory, By David Brooks.
Betsy L. Angert Be-Think
There’s hope for all of them then!
Omigod, and it just turned 31 degrees in Hell.
when it comes to stuff like this, but if the conservative chorus starts talking about the runaway spending, even if they are really and for true appalled, this only gives the administration (read: Karl Rove, Dick Cheney) an glorious opening for slashing everything under the sun, and really shortchanging any meaningful assistance to people in need.
And they will bill it all as “getting fiscal discipline” just in time for ’06.
’cause as we all know, they really could not give a rat’s ass what actual conservatives think either….
This is just one more bit of evidence that the Bush regime is not a conservative one. They are extremists in every sense of the word; looting the treasury for their friends and themselves and waging wars of aggression according to neocon ideological dogma as expressed by the “Project For The New American Century” crowd.
But Brooks is not just speaking from “conservative conviction”, (if there is such a thing). He’s setting the stage for those with extreme agendas like Grover Norquist to mount the final assault on all remaining social programs; an assault carried out under the guise of “true conservatism” but in fact an assault that is part of a broader swindle. The rampant spending (looting) by the Bush gang deliberately creates the pretext for the so-called conservatives to claim that they need to cut all these programs because the country can’t afford them anymore if we’re to get the economy under control. (It’s sort of like the child convicted of murdering his parents asking the judge for leniency because he’s an orphan.)
Listen closely to Brooks and you will never hear him call for a rollback of any of the tax giveaways to the wealthiest 5% of the population. You will never hear him call for more investment in any social program in order to help more people climb above and stay above the poverty line. You will never hear him decry the massive deficits we have as a destructive force that is helping to cripple US economic strength.
Brooks denounces the big spending, but it’s because he’s looking forward to more elimination of social program spending. He may have been a true conservative himself once upon a time, but those days of reality-based thinking for him are long gone. He drank the neocon koolaid quite a while back, and it’sclear from his journalistic record of opinion mongering that he’s getting further and further away from reality as the grip of his delusional ideology strengthens it’s grip on him.
You siad it much more forcefully than I did!
I will cling to the hope that the images of Katrina’s failed response are etched into our collective brains (and not just those of us that recognized long ago that the Federal government has a role to play in our lives.)
Tax cuts come with a cost, a cost to what it means to be a safe and secure nation. Americans saw on their TV what AMERICAN CITIZENS have to deal with and how our Federal Government has absolutely failed all of us. Kool Aid drinkers will swallow whatever bullshit is spewed their way, but I think the people admitting that they are W. supporters are becoming fewer and fewer. You find those in denial (“I’m a libertarian”), but I don’t see as many supporters anymore. It’s carried over into our supposedly moderate Governor Schwarzenegger (who is anything but moderate), as he has fallen well short of his fundraising goals and seen his popularity sinking fast. He doesn’t even want Bush to visit the state.
I dare the neocons to try to sell social security reform again, or any other cuts to social net programs. Grover Norquist may have wanted the whole equation, but all he is going to get is the exploded debt, and his architects booted out of office — and much higher taxes than we all would have paid had we just funded programs along the way (gee, wasn’t that the law with Democratic Congress’ and Clinton?) Let’s bring back Gramm-Rudman, and thank God sunset clauses were in effect for these tax cuts. The public is ready to examine their own budget and see exactly how much they’ve benefited from these tax cuts as wages have stagnated, as CEO’s double-dip from exhorbitant compensations and tax cuts, as they “lead” their companies into bankruptcy, wiping obligations onto taxpayers (see Airlines, pensions).
I think the public is in much more of a mood to radically scale back neocon nation building and roll back tax cuts, finally realizing that the tax cuts are extremely slanted to the wealthiest in this country rather than complete the Norquist “drown the elephant” plan. Our first responders, National Guard, teachers are real people that have real impact in our lives. How have the tax cuts been working out for them and for us as they serve us?
The Republicans are running for re-election, and they don’t exactly have a record of accomplishment to run on. Record deficits, failed Iraq war and planning, with Rove and Abramoff investigations ready to pile onto the corruption tag the Republicans are heavily carrying. The Democratic Party is still making many mistakes, but most think there is only one alternative to keep the Washington D.C. insiders in check — at least a split party balance; I hope both houses of Congress for a start.
The Republicans will have a long time ever convincing those in the “reality-based” community that they are the party of smaller government. They are the party of corruption who takes away civil rights and privacy rights. The adrenaline rush of Clinton-bashing and 9/11-reaction is crashing — and the White House is floundering without a plan … once again.
I would love to be as optimistic as you about the public being ready to repudiate the Bush regime agenda in a serious way. Sadly, I believe we have considerably farther to go before enough of the public is finally ready to bring abut the kind of change needed if we’re to reclaim the country and begin repairing the damage wrought by these lunatics.
Certainly the polls are encouraging; discontent and distrust of Bush policies are at an all time high and there’s little reason to think these numbers will improve for them in any meanngful way over time. But I think it’s important to remember a few things.
One is that Bush himself, as well as the main players in his regime are not up for re-election anyway. So whatever the public might think about the White House specifically, they have no real leverage on them at the ballot box. Additionally, with the exception of Cheney himself, virtually none of the true neocons who’ve hijacked the executive branch of government are elected anyway; they’re all appointed. So they’re not directly impacted by the will of the public either.
You can be sure, however, that these neocon sociopaths will be working very hard to make their crackpot ideology of war and empire indispensible to the country, and the way they will do that is to try to widen the war in the MidEast by creating a pretext to attack Iran.
Now one could argue that if we Democrats picked up a majority in Congress that all that might change,and certainly that’s possible. I would only say, look at who the most prominent and powerful Dems are and ask yourself if it’s likely they’d vote against funding for continued military aggression in the MidEast if Iran was a new member of the active enemy there. (The neocons know that if they can create the war conditions and the propaganda to support it, that the majority of congress members from both parties will be afraid to vote against requests for money to wage the war. The neocons care less about elections here at home than they do about their ability to foment conflict and get their big money pals to run the propaganda machine. The neocon agenda transcends the identity of those in office. They reason that if they can create instability in the MidEast the US will have no choice but to engage in the conflict, even though doing so will make things worse. The neocons think this is fine because they don’t care about the best interests of America, they care only about the (imagined) perfection of their own insane agenda for global hegemony.
As for the Grover Norquist, non-neocon gang of looters, their fortunes will rest on whether they can browbeat enough of their allies in congress to keep voting against the public interest on finance matters and at the same time survive the outrage of the public when their crackpot ideas further disenfranchise more and more Americans. I think we have a ways to go there before a tipping point is reached; before enough people finally understand that the entire “shrunken government” meme advanced by Norquist & Co is a complete scam designed to loot the treasury at the expense of anyone who doesn’t agree with them. And even here we have a deficiency of strong Democrats willing to stand up against these creatures.
Our best hope is for the Repub party to fracture along the true conservative/ radical extremist line, weakening their unity. It could happen but I won’t hold my breath.
This turned into a bit of a rant, but what the hell! It’s Saturday ight!
I would say that about most people in general, almost everyone who posts here — and anytime from you, sbj!
My perspective is a little different, because I live in California. The central valley, including Sacramento where I live, are more conservative than L.A. or especially San Francisco. But there is a mini-me version of “W.” here in the form of “Arnold”, and the results aren’t pretty (from a Republican perspective.) We have a special election being forced on us by the special interests who bought Schwarzenegger long ago. There is a distinct change in feeling towards both Schwarzenegger and Bush around here. The local host of the Air America affiliate challenged listeners to find “W.” bumper stickers around — I can’t find but a couple a day, compared to dozens (more than Kerry) all the way up until this year. The Democrats of California always hated Bush, now the independents do, and the Republicans are even against him. Schwarzenegger’s approvals are in the tank, and although he has announced re-election for next year, that was to prop up his anemic fund raising. Watch when the proposals he endorses all go down to defeat (I’m worried about one anti-union measure) and see how Schwarzenegger plays the family card and runs back to Hollywood and the “Yes Men” he has surrounded himself with, with his tail between his legs.
(talk about your rant!)
America isn’t going to buy the propaganda about Iran, fool me once … you won’t get fooled again-sorta thing. America isn’t going to buy the go-it-alone theory either; we’ve seen the results, and Russia and China are strongly against the European and U.S. actions. As we strongly remind Democrats in Congress that their vote in Iraq failed their Constitutional oversight responsibility, while they haven’t come up with strong public stands to take that role over — I think they will when it comes to authorizing any action against Iran. Also, we simply don’t have the troops. If anything, we need the National Guard home as soon as possible, and begin to rebuild their lives and again count on their serious and important role of safeguarding the homeland. And, active duty recruiting is woeful, and not just the grunts. The officer corps is depleted, and the generals have seen that the neocons in Washington absolutely play cronyism to the highest levels. So, either all the Generals in play are buying into nuking Iran or some outrageous move like that, or there will be absolute mutiny or refusal to follow through on orders. Now, someday the U.S. will have to realize that the Bush policies specifically, and U.S. arrogance in general has sped up nuclear proliferation, and the well-educated, young population of Iran may not like living in under the Mullahs, but they certainly will take as much pride in their country and their right to own whatever weapons systems they develop as Pakistan, India, China, Russia and especially Israel are “allowed” to have.
Fracturing of the Republicans is helpful, and I believe occurring. The theologians want their cake, but we all know who has the real power — corporations, and unfortunately for too long and with both parties. For every Schiavo mess, there is more than just a bankruptcy bill bone tossed to the corporations. Dean’s 50-state strategy and Democracy Bonds are helping. The power of the blogs and activist grassroots able to be mobilized and utilize technology works in the liberal favor, not in the favor of those who created 30-year plan that all of us now see the effect of. We can debate about framing, right wing controlled media, etc. but I think there is real opportunity coming up. People saw with their own eyes that although they (Bush voters) don’t live in the projects, these were Americans who were left stranded, and Bush is spending big bucks to rebuild without any plan to pay for it and for the FIRST time are beginning to question that. Well, maybe it started with Social Security (what arrogance of Bush to take that one on), but I think the public is starting to question the outrageous spending that has happened with Republican Congress and White House, even conservatives as illustrated by the Brooks piece. I could see Shields pointing out that Bush is increasing spending faster than LBJ — but for Brooks to raise it indicates serious budget fatigue with these clowns.
The incumbent rule works the majority of the time, but not when the country is unhappy with the direction of the country, and I think that would be the case now and more will go wrong for the house-of-cards-the-neocons-built before November. Give Democrats the House, and the power of subpoena, and watch the investigations begin. In a worse case scenario, the bastards get pardoned as Bush goes off to Texas to drink to enjoy whatever he did before this “hard work” destruction of eight years — but the legacy will forever be tarnished, and the “drown the elephant” plan just won’t work. In fact, I think the Republicans have swung the pendulum SO far away from what America stands for, that if we can manage a FDR and cooperative Congress, we will be able to have a New Deal that takes care of our children, takes care of our health care, and manages an Apollo project re: energy independence. That’s quite a bit different from where we are today, but we need true leaders, speaking intelligently and understandably, leading us into a 21st century. America has to swallow its pride and realize that we blew a great opportunity, though I don’t believe Bush has won a single Presidential election. Many do still support him; many more previously supported him.
Now THAT’s a Rant! (with a heavy dose of optimism and belief in the U.S.A. to recognize how far we’ve gone off track, and how extreme the policies of the last 5 (or 30) years have been)
And a compliment for a great rant right back at you.
I lived in California for many years, (SF, Marin & Sonoma counties), and I know how politics is “different” there. It was pretty clear that the ambitious Schwartzenegger would be a disaster if only because of his arrogance, not to mention that he’d inevitably have to break all his major promises if he was to get any help from the powerbrokers there.
I agree with you that the American people by and large won’t be duped again into supporting war with Iran, but my remarks about the neocon agenda were intended to convey that, regardless of whether they think public support would coalesce or not, they would still do all they could to start a new front in their war with Iran. (I didn’t mention previously that I see their plan of attack as one based on missiles and bombs, not boots on the ground. The idea is to generate more violence in the region, insuring the long-term presence of a huge US military presence in the region.)
As you say, we need leaders, and sadly, whenI look at the Dem party lineup of influential members in Congress, I am dismayed, since most of the powerful ones are not really interested in upholding the principles we hold dear. So, in a certain sense, prominentplayers in ourown party are more of an obstacle to the increased influence of a true progressive philosophy than the Repubs are.
I love this blog at BooTrib. There are so many thoughtful and wise and weell nformed people genuinely looking for solutions, looking for a way to make things better.
umm…this diary is showing up 3 times on the Recent Diary list.
“So what you have is a governing philosophy that doesn’t apply to the real world, so they have no sense of priorities, no sense of what’s important and what’s not, no sense of restraint and where to direct their effort”.
Their hearts tell the GOP that government is evil. Their leaders don’t give a damn if the government runs well or not. All that matters is re-election and power. As a result, the federal government is crashing to pieces right in front of us.
Being a big fan of the Lehr News Hour, I saw that segment too, and nearly fell off my sofa as David Brooks spoke!
I can’t remember if it was Brooks or Mark Shields who also mentioned how Clinton had left us with a huge surplus (around $500 something billion ?) and now Bush has the American people shouldering a huge $790 billion(?) deficit. David Brooks was going off about pork barrel spending and the total lack of fiscal responsibility of the Republicans. And that Bush has never vetoed or sent one of those bills back to the Congress. He was very obviously pissed. It was a beautiful thing – I would love to have a copy of the transcript.
I felt very hopeful after that. All this Republican partisan spending and promising of unlimited funding (to save face) is finally hitting them in the place that they care the most about. After all, any halfway intelligent person I know who was insane enough to vote for Bush did it on the basis that he would be better at keeping us safe, protect us from terrorism and reduce big government and spending. He’s failed miserably on every one of those fronts, and the light bulb is finally going off in many of his supporters minds and pocketbooks.
SHIELDS AND BROOKS September 23, 2005
Opps! Thanks JimS – I was a bit off on the surplus/deficit numbers – billions/trillions –
I get lost once we get out of the millions. It was great to read over the transcript –
it clarified some points I wasn’t sure of – sort of.
Thanks again.
Here’s how I keep perspective on the differences between million/billion/trillion.
In brand new $100 dollar bills;
$1million is a stack of bills approx. 2 Ft. high
$1Billion is a stack taller than the Empire State Building
$1Trillion is a stack that if laid on it’s side would stretch from Miami to Jacksonville, Florida, (a little over 300 miles)
Thanks for the keen perspective on these numbers –
I fear it actually reinforces my sad inability to relate to them.
After all, they’ll never show up in my bank account!
Thanks again though!
Thank you for the link to the transcript, and I would adjust some of my comments from earlier.
Brooks clearly is thinking the problem is entitlement programs, not tax cuts, and the deficits are manageable in relation to the GDP. I do seem to remember Bob Dole and some Democratic Senator making the necessary adjustments to one entitlement program, so we would be running the Social Security SURPLUSES we now have to FUND the higher entitlement costs in the years ahead. I do also feel that a national health care policy that makes sense would go a long way towards helping with Medicare/Medicaid underfunding, as well as actually trimming costs from the V.A. benefit system, just as we are entering a phase of long term medical costs associated with the Bush Blunder aka Iraq.
I wish some political force could actually bravely discuss paying off the DEBT before ever THINKING of cutting taxes (ESPECIALLY when they are so heavily slanted to the extremely wealthy and towards corporations.)
With a zero balance on our credit cards (no U.S. debt) THEN we can intelligently discuss proper tax policy. But what do I know? I’m no Bonddad or Jerome a Paris or other experts who thankfully share insights ’round here.
Dear All. .
My apology. I was confused. I thought the diary had disappeared. Therefore, I saved it multiple times. Susan helped me to realize what happened and I think I reconciled the problem.
I appreciate all your comments and the link to the transcript was within the text. I apologize for not making that more obvious.
I truly and greatly appreciate all the thoughtful and thought provoking comments you each have offered. The story was quite startling to me. I am glad that many of you thought it was as well.
Brooks may be laying the basis for keeping the Katrina relief funding low. I don’t trust the man.
and has zero credibility with me. But other conservative organizations are strongly criticizing the budgets of the last five years, and of course they would want the budget to be balanced by budget cuts so they could keep the tax cuts.
I don’t think Americans are ready to go without their programs, though. No Child Left Behind is woefully underfunded, the Pentagon is vastly overfunded, and Social Security is untouchable.
If smart people think in terms of cost/benefits, how much would have been saved if we had fully funded our Army Corps of Engineers and their levee building? 200-1 maybe? That’s a helluva return! I don’t know much about it, but apparently there was corruption even with the money that was allocated. That means MORE oversight, not less funding for our infrastructure which is falling apart.