New York Times Death Spiral Watch (David Brooks Cannot Add Department)

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Outsourced to Matthew Yglesias:

The Price of Reform (Domestic Policy): I thought there were plenty of congenial ideas in David Brook's latest stab at formulating a reformist conservative agenda, but I wonder a bit about his math. Brooks writes that "Income taxes are not going to be coming down, but they need to stay where they are."

Things being what they are in the modern conservative movement, Brooks might as well admit that he worships a shrine of Karl Marx as offer this oblique criticism of the Supply Side Gospel. After all, if lower tax rates bring more revenue, why not cut cut cut forever? Meanwhile, what Brooks is offering is inadequate to the scale of his agenda. He wants:

• "a new working class tax credit applied against the payroll tax"
• "a larger child tax credit" "increases in the Earned Income Tax Credit"
• "nurse-home visits for children in chaotic homes"
• "Preschool should be radically expanded"
• "copy the models -- like KIPP Academies -- that actually work"

This is all fine, but it would cost a lot of money. Brooks sort of elides this with the observation that "per-pupil expenditures [. . .] are not sufficient to produce superb information-economy workers" which is true. But it's also true that KIPP teachers "typically earn 15 to 20 percent more in salary than traditional public school teachers." These reform proposals are good idea, but they're not an alternative to the traditional liberal notion that if you want better outcomes for kids you're going to have to spend more money on kids. But higher taxes are off the table. So where does that leave us? You'd need to pare entitlements pretty severely just to stop the costs from rising. Are we cutting the defense budget instead of continuing on the path of large annual increases? I don't want to dismiss the possibility out of hand; I'd certainly favor something like that. But does Brooks?

Everybody like me has a big problem with Brooks. He is certainly intelligent. But has he just not done his homework, and does he not know that his program doesn't add up--is he just lazy? Or does he know very well that his proposals are b---s--- and not care because he is not in the informing-the-public business but is instead playing some deep political game to try to get White House mess privileges for his friends? Or both?

And everybody like me has a big problem with an organization--like the New York Times--that gives a platform to Brooks. Don't they have any ethics? Don't they think they ought to be in the inform-the-public business? Yet there is not even a single phone call from an editor saying, "David, it's your column, but this just doesn't add up..."

Comments

[Roger Albin]

Sorry, but Brooks is not, in a basic sense, intelligent. Anyone who puts forward a "conservative" program that is part John Dewey and part European-style social democracy lacks basic logical skills.

[howard]

roger gets to the point i was going to make, by relaying an anecdote i've told in these preccincts before.

i was watching firing line with my mother one night when i was a teenager in the late '60s.

"boy that bill buckley is intelligent," my mother, a staunch lifelong liberal said.

"no, mom" i replied, "he's articulate. if he were intelligent, he wouldn't say so many dumb things."

[Observer]

"And everybody like me has a big problem with an organization--like the New York Times--that gives a platform to Brooks. Don't they have any ethics? Don't they think they ought to be in the inform-the-public business?"

You aren't serious about these two question. Officially, capitalism has no ethics, just profits. And the Times isn't in the inform-the-public business, they're in the sell-eyeballs-to-advertisers business. They evaluate writers on the basis of whether the new readers they draw are more numerous than the old ones they drive away. You know these things perfectly well.

If you want to talk about ethics, never mind Brooks (although I do mind Brooks). What about Dowd, Connelly, Kristol, and (perhaps the prize-winner of the last ten years) Judy Miller?

I'd like to think that in the long run informing the public would be the best strategy for attracting eyeballs. When will the long run arrive? If I knew that I'd be smart.

ps
And a grateful acknowledgment to John Emerson.

pps
And a bigger one to Paul Krugman.

[pgl]

But, but, but - this is the standard GOP theory that money grows on trees. McCain wants more defense spending paid for by tax cuts. OK, Brooks should know better but then the leaders of the GOP should also know better. I guess the difference is that we are used to politicians lying to us wherease Brooks at least pretends to be a journalist.

[pgl]

But, but, but - this is the standard GOP theory that money grows on trees. McCain wants more defense spending paid for by tax cuts. OK, Brooks should know better but then the leaders of the GOP should also know better. I guess the difference is that we are used to politicians lying to us wherease Brooks at least pretends to be a journalist.

[Eric Ralph]

It's an opinion piece. The NYT could police those, but it would kind of defeat the purpose. Opinion writers get rope. They can hang themselves.

And as Observer says, the bottom line is the drawn readers, not the public service.

Me, I've long stopped reading Brooks. Actually, I've started skipping the sainted Krugman too. Maybe after the election more of his columns will be interesting, rather than seeming like campaign hackery.

[howard]

eric, as lord keynes tells us, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.

when newspapers refuse to edit factual errors of opinion writers, that is despicable, and it would not defeat the purpose of having an opinion column to be sure that the facts are accurate.

happily, it won't be long now until some bright publisher (by which i obviously exclude pinch sulzberger and donald graham) realizes that in the age of blogging, there is no point in overpaid, underproductive op-ed writers and gets rid of the whole lot.

then brooks can invent his own facts to his heart's content online and see if anyone cares....

[William Bennett]

The late Louis Menand is quoted in his obituary as holding, and uttering, the opinion that there are Democrats and stupid people. David Not-a-Deep-Thinker Brooks is, in his way, literate, but calling him intelligent somehow doesn't capture his blithe misappropriation of questionable evidence to support his fundamentally frivolous opinions.

[polo]

You just don't get Brooks. He isn't getting anything inside the White House -- except maybe in the (dead) office of evangelical earmarks.

Instead, he is trying to pull the White House and Republican Party over to his position on the field -- which as far as I can see it is "Left Out". He can't bring himself to buy into any of the hard-core stuff, like NeoConservativism, ClubforGrowthism, EvangelicalsSaveIsraelism, CEObigpayoutnoresponsibilityism, TheConstitutionIsWhatWeSayism or even TortureisGoodism. He is wooly on all of those. But he has declared that wooliness itself an ideology, and hopes to persuade everyone (and perhaps really, especially, please please, Barack Obama!) that he stands in the center.

I'm not sure he is even worth all that analysis, but that, like Bush, he persists in hanging around and pissing us off.