David ‘Honey BoBo’ Brooks made the following observations during his appearance on Meet the Press yesterday.
MR. DAVID BROOKS (Columnist, New York Times): Yeah. Well, first, let’s say what’s happening in Washington right now is pathetic. When you think about what the revolutionary generation did, what the Civil War generation did, what the World War II generation did, we’re asking not to bankrupt our children and we’ve got a shambolic, dysfunctional process. Now I think most of the blame still has to go to the Republicans. They’ve had a brain freeze since the election. They have no strategy. They don’t know what they want. And they haven’t decided what they want. But if I had to fault President Obama, I would say that sometimes he’s– governs like a– a visitor from a morally superior civilization. He comes in here and he will not– he– he’ll talk with Boehner, he won’t talk with the other Republicans. He hasn’t built the trust. Boehner actually made a pretty serious concession, 800 billion dollars in tax revenues, probably willing to go up on rates. But the trust wasn’t there to get that done. And if the president wants to get stuff done over the next four years, it’s got to be a lot more than making the intellectual concessions. It’s got– got to get to the place where Republicans say, okay, we’ll take a risk. This guy won’t screw us.
So, Mr. Brooks criticizes the president for negotiating the fiscal cliff with John Boehner but not with other Republicans. Yet, David Brooks’ employer reported in early December that John Boehner had directly requested that others be excluded from the negotiations. Here’s New York Times’ reporters Jonathan Weisman and Peter Baker from December 6th:
At House Speaker John A. Boehner’s request, Senate leaders and Representative Nancy Pelosi have been excluded from talks to avert a fiscal crisis, leaving it to Mr. Boehner and President Obama alone to find a deal, Congressional aides say.
All sides, even the parties excluded, say clearing the negotiating room improves the chance of success. It adds complexity as the two negotiators consult separately with the leaders not in the room. But it also minimizes the number of people who need to say yes to an initial agreement.
Maybe Mr. Brooks thinks that the president should be negotiating informally on the telephone with Republican backbenchers. He could invite them to the White House for egg nog, snowball fights, and other “trust-building” exercises. And then Mr. Brooks says that the president acts like he comes from some morally-superior planet. How is that really different from calling him an uppity arrogant Kenyan?
I also love how he says he lays most of the blame on the Republicans but it’s the president who gets called an alien.
John Boehner made a serious concession?
First of all, he didn’t. Second of all, because no one else was in the room to sign off on Boehner’s “concession,” it didn’t wind up being a concession at all. Because Boehner wouldn’t let the other Republicans in on the negotiations, he didn’t build the trust he needed to sell his caucus a deal. It wasn’t the president’s fault; it was Boehner’s.
Happy New Year, BoBo. I hope you enjoy your sinecures.
