David Brooks gives way to cynical despair over Iraq.
David Brooks has been the champion of the Bush administration, sitiing at his kitchen table at 4 in the morning hatching up plots for how best to pin the blame for Plamegate and other such scandals on the Democrats. But today, he seems resigned to cynical despair and could care less about either party.
The Iraq war is not going to have that kind of pervasive cultural impact, but it has already shifted the zeitgeist. There has been a sharp drop in Americans' faith in their institutions. Trust in government has fallen back to about half of where it was in 2001. More Americans believe that government is almost always wasteful and inefficient, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center.
There has been a sharp decline in support for the United Nations. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people who say the U.S. should mind its own business when it comes to world affairs. Isolationist sentiment is about where it was just after Vietnam.
But this is reversible; Jimmy Carter's popularity went way up after he successfully brokered the deal that allowed Israel and Egypt to sign a peace treaty and restore diplomatic relations. But the American belief that government is wasteful and inefficent will backfire badly on the Republicans and take away one of their biggest strengths. The Republicans have always been elected on the belief that they were better than the Democrats at efficent government. Yet it was Bill Clinton who wiped out the deficit in just a few years. And here in Washington, our governor, Christine Gregiore, fresh off a controversial 40-vote victory over her opponent, successfully wiped out a huge deficit here.
Yet there is some truth in what Brooks is saying, and it does not look good for the Republicans. In 1920, the American people turned out the Democrats and elected the Republicans on a promise of a return to normalcy, which meant isolationism. Today, the Americans want a return to normalcy, which is best represented by the 1990's and Bill Clinton. That is why Hillary Clinton has such high levels of support early on. However, that will change, given the fact that she is an advocate of Bush's bang-your-head-against-the-wall strategy.
Under first impressions, John McCain also conveys a sense of normalcy. He is seen as a straight-shooter who will be an independent voice in Washington. Yet he has permanently damaged that standing with his lack of knowledge about Iraq and his resultant hewing to the Bush party line, except on torture. He sounds like one of those apolcalyptic fundamentalists out of the Left Behind series when he warns about the dire consequences of ever leaving Iraq. Like Clinton and Bush, he is adept in the art of banging one's head against the brick wall.
And John Kerry, while he has displayed some of the fire that was lacking in his campaign, is seen as too much of a nuanced flip-flopper who says things in 100 words what can be said in 20-40.
This longing for normalcy will only help Senator Russ Feingold. He gives straight answers to the questions and possesses the judgement to understand that we should be going after Al-Qaeda, not trying to referee a civil war in Iraq.
The hammer of disapproval has fallen hardest on the Republicans, of course, but the public is just as eager to think the worst of the Democrats. Seventy percent of Americans say Democratic criticism of the war is hurting troop morale, according to a poll by RT Strategies. Most Americans cynically believe that Democrats are leveling their attacks on the war to gain partisan advantage, while only 30 percent believe that they are genuinely trying to help U.S. efforts.
But what would these people think about the Republicans? By the same numbers Brooks gives and by his logic, these numbers from the RT poll would be even lower for the Republicans. The problem with this poll is that it only asked about attitudes towards the Democrats. A fairer way to measure voter attitudes would have been to ask about attitudes towards the GOP as well.
Brooks concludes that a tide of cynical skepticism is descending on America. That might be true, but it is reversible, as I pointed out above. In order to break that, we need to elect candidates who were not responsible for the current mess in Iraq. We need people who are fresh voices for change and who will understand the limits of their mandates. The Republicans mistakenly thought they had a mandate to institute a fundamentalist theorcracy here in this country; they have been proven sadly wrong. All the American people want at this stage is to have candidates who will maintain a sense of normalcy for the middle-class and help those of us less fortunate to get the resources they need to live normal lives. Ideology is far down on the list of things to do.
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