Try a little tenderness

And it's look who's finally showing up for The Normalizing? David F. Brooks ("Fellow Trump Critics, Try a Little Listening") asking all his friends to take a hopeful and helpful attitude to the president-elect and his interesting plans:

Whether it’s reforming immigration or trade policy, his governing challenge is going to be astoundingly hard and complicated. Surely this is not the moment to get swept up in our own moral superiority, but rather to understand the specificity of the proposals he comes up with and to offer concrete amendments and alternatives to address the same problems.

It's just like November 2008, right, when he asked Obama's opponents to cut him some slack and assist him to govern responsibly, by engaging with the Democrats' proposals. Oh, wait, no he didn't, he told the president-elect to listen to his opponents and look for ways of engaging with them, because the election was a sure sign that America was moving to the right:

I’m dreaming of an administration led by Barack Obama, but which stretches beyond the normal Democratic base. It makes time for moderate voters, suburban voters, rural voters and even people who voted for the other guy.... there won’t just be a few token liberal Republicans in marginal jobs. There will be people like Robert Gates at Defense and Ray LaHood, Stuart Butler, Diane Ravitch, Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Jim Talent at other important jobs. ("Change I Can Believe in", 11/7/08) 

Obama did hire Gates and LaHood, too, as if he'd read that stupid column, as he probably did. I wish he'd hired my girl Ravitch, now that she's ended up on the radical side, instead of that tool Arne Duncan. Trump's discussing Jerry Falwell, Jr., as a possible secretary of education. I see lots of ways of collaborating with that and finding a way to split the difference between our views. Maybe we can talk him into allowing evolution theory to be taught in high school biology alongside the approved theory from Genesis 1. Compromise! But it's always the left side that has to compromise with the right, because reasons.

Long version at The Rectification of Names.