I'm sure Brooks is kind of a nice guy. Civilized. But always so self-serving. Sloppy? Certainly. A Republican, he clings to the idea that when one side plays dirty, the other must be doing the same.
Jonathan Chait isn't exactly cruel (he seems to like Brooks) but in his prolonged attack on Brooks for the columnist's latest attempt to belittle the president, he hits home.
Despite all appearances, I don't want to be too hard here on Brooks. He's trying to be fair-minded and reasonable. But his admission that he misstated Obama's alleged lack of a fiscal plan out of "frustration," rather than ignorance is damning. Everybody gets things wrong but you can't just print false factual claims to make a point! Ultimately he's just displaying a kind of sloppy thinking. He conceives of politics in grand ideological archetypes, rather than building his beliefs on the basis of facts and evidence. He's inadvertently displaying how a generalized belief in moderation unmoored in deeper policy grounding leads you badly astray. ...Chait, Daily Intel
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