Right Wing, Half Wrong

David Brooks, in his inimitable, even a stopped clock is correct once or twice a day style, has an op-ed in the NYT today telling us why Sarah Palin is not a good choice for John McCain, not dwelling on her personal baggage, but on her unfortunate similarities to the Senator from Budweiser.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy. [...] Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

All well & good, but Mr. Brooks nonetheless comes up w/ a few howlers, to put it mildly.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest.

It should be obvious to anyone granted an NYT column that the very difference between left & right is that of public service versus narrow self-interest. Has the Bush Administration taught Mr. Brooks nothing besides the already tired "Mr. Bush isn't a real conservative" talking point? According to Mr. Brooks, Sen. McCain has

been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff

& his selection of Gov. Palin

allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

Not a good move to run on the old "clean up Washington" ticket, not only because there are a few more problems in our nation & our world than "Washington," but because Sen. McCain's campaign against "big money donors" was an attempt to distance himself from his having been a member of the Keating Five. While Alaska's representatives may have been "earmark" champions (Why did "earmark" replace "pork barrel spending," anyway?) when much of your state is Federal land, you just don't have the tax base to provide infrastructure that other states can pay for on their own. Not that this excuses any actual criminal activity Messrs. Young & Stevens may have been involved in. Pentagon contracting bullshit? Still going on. Sen. McCain's own service, the Navy, doesn't even know what it wants. Jack Abramoff? Just say Google™. If only Mr. Brooks were capable of doing a bit of research. This one we just don't get.

But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

Which "congregation" is that, the one w/ the Scarlet Letters, perhaps? And we're talking here about under-18 unwed parents, not merely "young parents." St. Nick on a Stick, it's the very end of the universe when most people, especially those of a duskier hue, if you know what we mean, have children out of wedlock, but when middle-class Anglos do it it's all "Oh, happens every day, no one's perfect, keep out of their private lives," ad nauseum. Mr. Brooks sees corruption everywhere.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

Certainly "confronting Putin" is a job for the Clean Gov't. Association., or maybe the League of Women Voters. 'Cause "corruption" is the only problem we have w/ Russia. But this becomes boring & pointless. The "Augean stables of Washington" will not & cannot be cleaned out until campaigns are publicly funded, & lobbyists giving money & the pols accepting it can be sent to the cooler for illegal bribery, as opposed to today's legal version. Mr. Brooks neglects to mention this. He's still right about why Mme. Gov. is a bad move, though. And we can only hope that Sen. McCain runs on the clean up Washington platform, while the American people are being forced to choose between eating or filling the gas tank so they can get at least some of their furniture out of the foreclosed house. Or greet their children's coffins as they return from the war zones. Remember: Reform, Prosperity, Peace.