Packer on Brooks

George Packer of the New Yorker defends Barack Obama 'gainst the slings and arrows of David Brooks, whom Packer calls "one of the best critics the Obama administration will have."

He argues that recent history has made Brooks' worldview obsolete. Used to be, conservatives were the pragmatic ones, and liberals were the starry-eyed dreamers. That's the tradition Brooks draws on when he writes:

I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well. I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S. economy.

Obama is going too far, too fast, and as such he's doomed to fail.

But is Brooks setting the bar too high? Packer certainly thinks so. According to him, it's liberals who are being pragmatic and conservatives who are the ideological ones. Conservatives like Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor aren't opposing Barack Obama because they're concerned he's pushing too far; they rejected the stimulus bill because they stubbornly refuse to let go of their discredited philosophy.

I think both Packer and Brooks are taking it too far when they turn the battle over the stimulus into a Grand War of Ideologies. Capitals necessary, because that's how much importance they give it.

Both conservatism and liberalism have always mixed pragmatism and ideology. The difference between them isn't that one side is realistic and the other idealistic. Conservatives and liberals disagree because they are idealistic about different things.

Liberals hold cherished notions about equality, humanity, and brotherhood. Conservatives get misty-eyed talking about tradition and history. They're both guilty of being over idealistic. Neither one can claim the mantle of pragmatism--at least, not without lying through their teeth.

So when Brooks accuses Obama of being too grandiose, or Packer claims Republicans are slaves to their dead ideology, both are wrong. Politics has always mixed the two. That's the way it's always been and always will be.