Ah, there is nothing quite like the repartee between New York Times’ columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks. They are so clever. I pick on David Brooks, but I just can’t help myself.
Gail Collins: Romney is both intelligent and sane, which I guess is saying quite a lot this year. But the man would change his position on the rotation of the earth around the sun if he thought it would get him a win in South Carolina.
David Brooks: That’s why you should love the guy. Let me put it this way: Would you rather have someone who authentically agrees with Michele Bachmann or someone who is just faking it? It seems to me that from your point of view you should be praying for inauthenticity. The more, the better.
That’s a ringing endorsement of prevarication, of rank opportunism, and of having contempt for the intelligence of the average voter. You might write it off as tongue-in-cheek but it isn’t really possible that Brooks is not serious. He supports Romney because he thinks he’s doing what has to be done to beat off a crazy alternative. Brooks was being honest here, but that’s about to change. Watch.
As for the overall field, I think it is decent enough: four current or former governors, a former House Speaker, a business magnate. There are a few oddballs, but I thought the quality of the Reagan debate, in particular, was as good as any I’d seen in either party for at least a decade. Rick Perry can’t keep up because the quality of the other participants is reasonably high.
Yes, the Reagan Library Debate, I remember it well. It’s the debate where Michele Bachmann promised us all $2 gasoline, Ron Paul said we don’t need air traffic controllers or food inspectors, and Herman Cain introduced his 9-9-9 Plan that would eliminate the capital gains, estate, and payroll taxes. It’s the debate where Rick Santorum promised that he could get Senate Democrats to sign off on a bill to reduce corporate taxes to zero. It’s the debate where Rick Perry won applause for executing 234 people, said climate-science was unsettled, and that it is a lie to tell young people that they will ever receive their Social Security checks. It’s the debate in which Mitt Romney endorsed building a 2,600 mile fence on the Mexican border and Newt Gingrich suggested that we outsource a legal guest worker program to American Express, Visa, and MasterCard. It was a superb debate if you value a bunch of jibber-jabber without any remote connection to anything the next president might actually do once in office. Or, you know, if you don’t value sanity in your political leaders.
After Gail Collins remarked that she couldn’t see anyone other than Romney and Perry who could conceivably be national leaders, Brooks became somewhat indignant.
David Brooks: I take that as a personal insult against the Herminator! Herman Cain. I feel compelled to rise in his defense. Unlike the current president he at least knows that this is the perfect moment for fundamental tax reform. He’s got his 9-9-9 plan (the virtues of which he has not hid under a barrel). He may be wacky in every other respect and offensive in some, but he at least understands the scope of the problems the country faces, and so I have sympathy for him. I wish President Obama had at least some of his vision.
Yes, the “virtues” of the 9-9-9 Plan. Set aside how badly this plan would screw the poor who would see their income taxes go from nothing to 9% and also suffer an additional 9% sales tax on purchased goods. When even the Moonie-owned Washington Times says that the plan would blow a $380 billion hole in the budget, you need to find more virtue. This is a man who supported bans on mosque-building and promised not to hire any Muslims to work in his cabinet. How does a black man born in 1945 in Memphis (and then raised in Georgia) forget his own past to the degree that he’ll openly promise to discriminate against people based on their religion?
I’ll close with this, which speaks for itself.
Gail Collins: Pardon me. I’m ready to move on but I can’t quite get past the vision of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry stuck together in the Polar Caves until next spring. What do you think they’d talk about?
David Brooks: Personally I think they’d lounge around in animal skins drawing beautiful paintings of wild animals on the cave walls, like those early cave dwellers did in France thousands of years ago. Perry would draw elegant mastodons, which he shot while jogging. Romney would paint saber-tooth tigers, riding in cages on the top of his car. (There, got that in.)
Thank you for forcing me to imagine Mitt Romney’s car smeared with saber-tooth tiger poop.
