DAVID BROOKS FAULTS OBAMA FOR ... DOING WHAT DAVID BROOKS RECOMMENDED

David Brooks, February 11, 2010:

Obama was inaugurated in the midst of an economic crisis, and the activist policy proposals took precedence....

It was not to be. Voters are in no mood for a wave of domestic transformation. The economy is already introducing enough insecurity into their lives. Unlike 1932 and 1965, Americans do not trust Washington to take them on a leap of faith....

The country has reacted harshly to the course the administration ended up embracing.... Independent voters have swung against the administration. Voters are not reacting to the particulars of each bill. They are reacting against the total activist onslaught....

The next challenge is to find a new project....

... he could propose some incremental changes in a range of areas and prove Washington can at least take small steps.

David Brooks today:

It's sad to [consider] the medium-sized policy morsels that President Obama put in his State of the Union address. He had some big themes in the speech, but the policies were mere appetizers. The Republicans absurdly call Obama a European socialist on the stump, but the Obama we saw Tuesday night was a liberal incrementalist.

There was nothing big....

Instead, there were a series of modest proposals that poll well.

... the core point is that these policies are incremental, not transformational. You could pass them all and the country might be slightly better off or slightly worse off, but it wouldn't be on a different trajectory....

In normal times, that sober, incremental approach would be admirable. In normal times, the best sort of change is gradual, flexible and constant. But these are not normal times....

So voters are scared of major change in really bad times, and hungry for incrementalism -- except when Obama agrees and goes incremental, at which point the country suddenly becomes desperate for major change.

Right. Got it.

Of course, I'm concealing the real explanation from you. In 2010, the major changes Brooks insisted that voters didn't want were health care reform, the stimulus, a proposed cap-and-trade bill, and so on. The major change Brooks thinks is absolutely essential now is ...

Simpson-Bowles.

But Brooks couldn't just say, "My change good, your change bad." In both cases, he said whatever Obama was doing was wrong. Funny how it always works out that way with Brooks.