Obama, the Attack Dog

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Times:

David Brooks: Gail, I must say this has been a tough week for those of us who personally admire President Obama and his advisers.

Gail Collins: David, I dont want to hear you complain about a tough week. You dont spend nearly as much time as I do in auditoriums full of semi-suicidal Democrats. Really, Im lucky I havent had to talk anybody off a roof ledge.

David Brooks: … As I was saying, my general rule is that if the president and his advisers are going to accuse somebody of committing a crime, they should have some scintilla of evidence behind the charge. Yet Obama seems to have precisely none behind his accusation that the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to influence the elections.

Gail Collins: I think the point was that we have no idea whos funneling money into the Chamber for the ads. Small businesses? Large corporations? Large Chinese corporations? Martians? Its insane that theres no disclosure requirement. I still havent gotten over the True Republican PAC which paid for ads against a candidate for governor in Alabama, claiming he supported the teaching of evolution. It turned out they were financed by the teachers union, which had no problem with evolution but wanted to hurt him for his policy on labor issues.

David Brooks: Some people make a distinction between hard money and soft money in politics, Ive come to learn that the only distinction that really matters in practice is Democratic Money and Republican Money. In 2008, when Democrats had a huge spending advantage, including $400 million in outside expenditures (much of it from unknown sources), there was no great fuss made about the nefarious influence of money in politics. But this year the Republicans are outraising the Democrats (at least at some levels) so suddenly there is great hue and cry. The Koch brothers have been spending millions for decades, and now suddenly they are allegedly responsible for organizing the Tea Party movement.

Gail Collins: I dont want to waste any of our conversation arguing about which party is more hypocritical when it comes to campaign finance. The moral here is that the very modest gains we made in controlling the influence of Big Money on elections have been lost, and were worse off than we were when we started trying to reform the system. Ill bet the sane version of John McCain is weeping in whatever limbo he now inhabits.

David Brooks: I dont like the influence of money any more than the next person. It magnifies transparency and unreason. The people who give tend to be tribal in their affiliations and they hate people who compromise and stray from party orthodoxy. The way to rise to leadership in Congress is through fundraising and so it is generally the most partisan who make it to the top.

But the leaders of neither party have the moral authority to criticize the other on this score. To do so means ignoring the mote in your own eye. And it is depressing to see Obama and others going off on this jag. There must be other ways of firing up the Democratic base. Is there no substantive issue they can talk about?

Gail Collins: Youve got me on that one. I think the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress have done a good job over the last two years, all things considered. But theyre running away from their best achievements, so theyll have no mandate to do anything if they do happen to maintain control. Plus, theyll be relying more than ever on guys like their partys Senate candidate in West Virginia whose ads show him putting a bullet through climate change legislation.

David Brooks: The second reason Obamas behavior is depressing is that it shows that the administration is getting mentally captured by the lefty blogosphere. The real secret of mature leadership is that you cant confuse your partys information food chain with reality. The lefty blogosphere, like the righty blogosphere, exaggerates or makes up facts that flatter its world view, ignores the rest and ends up in a comforting fantasy land. The Obama people used to understand this. In this case, they seem to have lost their distance from it.

Gail Collins: Youve lost me on that one. The lefties arent particularly obsessed about foreign money. The special interests they hate most are right here at home.

David Brooks: Obamas line of attack is also bad for his re-election prospects and the future of the Democratic party as a whole. The main reason the Democrats are in trouble is not the Tea Party movements. It is because independents have abandoned the Democrats. The polls clearly indicate indies think the party is too liberal and too hostile to business. So why does Obama take every conceivable opportunity to go to war with business?
________

David Brooks laments Obama's departure from Mr. Nice Guy mode, revealing the pettiness underneath the facade.