David Brooks
New York Times columnist and NPR/PBS pundit David Brooks (5/19/14) has a solution to the problem with American democracy: We should have less of it.
Surveying the evidence around the globe, Brooks is worried that that democracy isn’t up to the task of managing the present. “Democracies tend to have a tough time with long-range planning,” he laments. “Voters tend to want more government services than they are willing to pay for.”
So what’s beating democracy? Brooks–and others–call them “Guardian States,” places like China and Singapore, where the safety net is smaller and elites have more say over economic policy. They don’t do everything right, he admits, but clearly their schools and pension systems are better than you’ll find in the United States.
As Brooks sees it:
American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or donor faction. Unrepresentative groups have disproportionate power in primary elections.
He’s not saying who these activist groups or lobbies might be, but the suggestion is that the blame is to be spread around more or less equally.
So what’s the fix? Let smart elites run things for us:
The quickest way around all this is to use elite Simpson/Bowles-type commissions to push populist reforms. The process of change would be unapologetically elitist. Gather small groups of the great and the good together to hammer out bipartisan reforms–on immigration, entitlement reform, a social mobility agenda, etc.–and then rally establishment opinion to browbeat the plans through.
Well, that’s an easy fix–remember how well the real Simpson/Bowles commission worked? And for a guy who has several national media platforms, I think he has certain people in mind who will be counted on to “rally establishment opinion.”
So what are these elite populists going to do for us? They will advocate policies
which push control over poverty programs to local charities; which push educational diversity through charter schools; which introduce more market mechanisms into public provision of, say, healthcare, to spread power to consumers.
Wait, what? I thought populism would advocate policies that were, well, popular. It’s not clear that expanding charter schools is an especially popular idea. It’s not all that clear what moving more poverty programs to “local charities” would even mean, though it’s the kind of rhetoric popular with Paul Ryan Republicans.
More “market mechanisms” in our healthcare system–does that sound like something anyone who wasn’t “unapologetically elitist” would rally behind? There’s plenty of polling out there that suggests the public would favor the opposite, via a single-payer system.
And “entitlement reform”–i.e., cutting Social Security and Medicare–is pretty much the definition of a policy that’s both anti-populist and unpopular.
And Matt O’Brien of the Washington Post‘s WonkBlog (5/20/14) argues that “too much democracy” isn’t really the problem with a dysfunctional Congress. The filibuster and the Republican “Hastert Rule” prevent passing bills that have widespread public support.
It’s not surprising that a pundit like Brooks would think that the solution for American democracy is to put people like him in charge of crafting policy, and to have other people like him rally the public behind their policies. But it’s surprising–sort of–that he’d actually publish that idea.
So what do you get when you merge the plutocracy and the punditocracy?
Maybe the plunderocracy … ?
But he is starting to believe his own B.S. and so he is going to market it, to you, for a price. He will take your money, and keep it. It’s that easy.
Sounds like DB would have us believe that he and his ilk are the platonic ‘philosopher kings’, but I have a strong suspicion (especially judging by the conservatives recent performance in government) that it’d be something closer to the Third Reich model of government…
that it’d be something closer to the Third Reich model of government…Eddie
Hay, even the NAZI’s had some morals repugnant as they were, this guy would make Caligula look like a benign philanthropist. The current crop of leaders are more like a 5 year old with a sore tooth.
So what do you get when you merge the plutocracy and the punditocracy?
Maybe the plunderocracy … ?
How about Pluto-crap-acy; nothing but a mickey mouse outfit.
I thought my description of David Brooks would catch on but it didn’t. I still think he’s America’s foremost sociocraptologist.
Oh sure David put you in charge…what a frickin laugh.
This is merely another thinly disguise that purports to be “progressive” and for the “good” of the country. It only takes a half of a brain (and that fits me) to see through this and realize that it is a plea for less regulation and more influence by business. Screw you , Dave.
That’s the problem. Guys like him are in control.
So…..here are some ideas for starting to get our democracy to work:
1. Redistrict using the new California model
2. Fight voter suppression wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head
3. Yes, get rid of the filibuster and Hastert rule
4. Force the media to do its job
5. Get off our progressive rear-ends and do something!
People like David Brooks why we need democracy. The corporate media he’s part of and the corporations they serve are why we don’t have it.
> Democracy Is a Drag; Put Guys Like Me in Charge
Fairness and Accuracy in Media ????? Where is that?
Our country is dysfunctional, he is right in that, and that if we want to defend ourselves in the world of atheistical commerce, we have to do something. That something takes a certain single-mindedness of purpose … a bit of a tyranny, a military state if you will.
So, the conversation we have not had, because of the American dimwit citizen is how to re-engineer the country to have both a competitive culture, education, housing, health-care, etc and maintain our military power.
Funny that Brooks talks about the problems with democracy, and not the problems that led to that, the destruction – purposeful – of the infrastructure of democracy, by our monopolistic support of big business tyranny, the purposeful provocation of racism, the disinvestment in the middle class and the programs to help all Americans.
Face it, we have an entrench, racist elite, racist, culturalist … and a little bit of that is sensible … most white Americans appreciate American culture, and are or have been made to fear its loss. We have no absorbed foreigners even as we say we want them to come here to work.
The policies have been to destroy American culture to make business and the corporate world … all of the corporate world -too big to fail, or question, and all of people’s problems – too small to care about.
Brooks sounds like he hasn’t a single original idea; as if he’s transcribing propaganda. The brazenness of the duplicity and mendacity of the likes of Brooks is clear when he calls for entitlement reform, and ignores the trillions doled out to the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street . [Anyone know if they’ve relocated to Beijing yet?] The same people, such that they are, who fed at the government trough are the same enjoying the doubling of the stock market since 2009. Nowhere do the likes of Brooks suggest they assume some representative and financial responsibility as act of justice and sign of appreciation. Instead the same people who bailed out the one percent are now being asked to further shoulder the catastrophes of casino capitalism. How come $1 billion a year hedge fund managers aren’t being asked to pony up an extra tenth of a percent?
Brooks has never had an original idea or thought in that tiny little head of his. He knows the only way he can support his lifestyle is by parroting toxic waste; what’s amazing to me is that anyone listens to this cretin and apparently takes him seriously.
DAVID BROOKS IS SUCH A NICE GUY BUT SOOO IDIOTIC. WHAT WE NEED IS TO GET RID OF FEDERALISM, THAT GIVES THE SAME NUMBER OF VOTES TO ALABAMA OR MAINE – WHERE RACISM DOES EXIST – THAT IT DOES TO CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK. MADE SENSE BACK THEN, BUT NO LONGER DOES. THE MAJORITY DOESN’T RULE. ANOTHER QUESTION: THERE WAS ONE KKK IN NC, MY HOME STATE, AS WHERE I LIVE, NY STATE. SINCE REPUBLICANS CAME TO POWER IN N.C. THERE ARE THREE NEW KKK SITES ON THE SPLC HATE MAP AND ONE NEO CONFEDERATE. WHY? AND NO ONE COVERS US WHITE SOUTHERNERS WHO WERE IN THE CRM THERE. TWO YANKEES ASKED AFTER I TOLD THEM I WAS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, ASKED “ON WHICH SIDE?” CAPS FOR BAD EYES GETTING WORSE.
What a 1930’s-something Fascist PIG!
Jesus, they’re not even trying to hide their oligarch-ish desires anymore. The sad thing is the sheeple will most likely buy into this new and absurd narrative. There’s never been a better time for Sen Warren’s (and others’) populist movement.
Oh, and one more thing. Gimme a break, David. Like we’ve had anything resembling a democracy since, oh I don’t know, the 1900’s.
I read his piece twice.It is confusing.Is he talking on a philosophical level,or a practical level where he avoids the “devil in the details”.Or is he just stating the fact that we are a little mired at this time in special interest groups gumming up the works.In the end the talk has to end -and you do have to commit.We HAVE gotten away from that.For instance……..Obama care.It was jammed through and now is working-poorly.How long will we allow that.Do we have enough lateral movement to scrap the things that dont work,and save the things that do