"We Don't Have Enemies In Politics"

Nathan Fletcher, an Iraq hero, has had enough of the GOP wars. As a California state assemblyman, he was one of the few in his party willing to work on a tax compromise with the Democratic governor. Spurned for the GOP mayoral nomination in San Diego in favor of a tea party regular, Fletcher has left the party to run as an independent. He caught the attention of David Brooks at the New York Times, who reports:

[Fletcher] declared, “I believe it’s more important to solve a problem than to preserve that problem to use on a campaign. I am willing to work or share or give all the credit to someone if the idea is good. I don’t believe we have to treat people we disagree with as an enemy. I’ve fought in a war. I have seen the enemy. We don’t have enemies in our political environment here.”

Fletcher is the decided underdog in the June 5 voting. But he represents a nationally important test case. Can the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, who were trained to be ruthlessly pragmatic, find a home in either political party? Can center-right moderates find a home in the GOP, even in coastal California? As the two parties become more insular, is it possible to mount an independent alternative?

We're Natural-Born Killers

As Christians prepare for Holy Week, which among other things is about our complicity in the killing of Jesus Christ, David Brooks suggests that most of us are theoretically capable of crimes such as the massacre Robert Bales allegedly committed in Afghanistan:

[E]ven people who contain reservoirs of compassion and neighborliness also possess a latent potential to commit murder.

David Buss of the University of Texas asked his students if they had ever thought seriously about killing someone, and if so, to write out their homicidal fantasies in an essay. He was astonished to find that 91 percent of the men and 84 percent of the women had detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies. He was even more astonished to learn how many steps some of his students had taken toward carrying them out.

One woman invited an abusive ex-boyfriend to dinner with thoughts of stabbing him in the chest. A young man in a fit of road rage pulled a baseball bat out of his trunk and would have pummeled his opponent if he hadn’t run away. Another young man planned the progression of his murder — crushing a former friend’s fingers, puncturing his lungs, then killing him.

These thoughts do not arise from playing violent video games, Buss argues. They occur because we are descended from creatures who killed to thrive and survive. We’re natural-born killers and the real question is not what makes people kill but what prevents them from doing so.

Photo by Andy Guilford

David Brooks' Ticket To Santorumville

In a nice way, David Brooks says Mitt Romney is stumbling because he appears too eager to please -- in other words, inauthentic. The solution:

He needs to show that he is willing to pursue at least a few unpopular policies, even policies that are unfashionable in his own party. Since many people fear that he is a suck-up, it would actually help him at this point if he violated party orthodoxy in some bold and independent way.

I don't think Republicans fear Romney's a suck-up. They fear he's a moderate. If he follows Brooks' advice, maybe Romney will feel more authentic and affirmed, but the nominee will be Rick Santorum.

The Morning Line On Libya

David Brooks on the shortcomings and perils of making war by coalition. For instance:

Most wars are fought by nations — by people aroused not only by common interests but by common passions, moralities and group loyalties. Multilateral campaigns rarely, on the other hand, arouse people. They are organized by elites, and propelled by calculation, not patriotism. No one wants to die for the Arab League, the United Nations or some temporary coalition of the willing.

In the Libyan campaign, Qaddafi’s defenders will be fighting for land, home, God and country. The multinational force will be organized by an acronym and motivated by a calibrated calculus to achieve a humanitarian end.

Also from the New York Times this morning, we learn:

[T]he firepower of more than 130 Tomahawk cruise missiles and attacks by allied warplanes have not yet succeeded in accomplishing the more ambitious demands by the United States — repeated by President Obama in a letter to Congress on Monday — that Colonel Qaddafi withdraw his forces from embattled cities and cease all attacks against civilians.

As the days pass, let's remember what he said.

Sin: What A Concept

David Brooks on a Washington, D.C.-area Torah teacher who's transfixing adult education classes by stressing values, accountability, and consequences:

[Erica] Brown seems to poke people with concepts that sit uncomfortably with the modern mind-set — submission and sin. She writes about disorienting situations: vengeance, scandal, group shame. During our coffee, she criticized the way some observers bury moral teaching under legal casuistry and the way some moderns try to explain away the unfashionable things the Torah clearly says.

She pushes the highly successful. No, serving the poor for a few days a year isn’t enough. Yes, it is necessary to expose a friend’s adultery because his marriage is more important than your friendship.

Glad That's Settled

For the last couple of years, David Brooks and Paul Krugman, whose columns appear on the New York Times op-ed page, have been conducting a gentlemanly duke-out about the federal government's role in stimulating the economy. Luckily, a blogger at the "Economist" has finally straightened it all out:

The trouble with the "liberal technicians", as I see it, is that they are caught in something of a no-man's-land between "old-fashioned hydraulic Keynesianism" and updated, "behavioural" neo-Keynesianism. The microfoundations of old-school hydraulic Keynesianism are no more plausible than those of the Lucas-Sargent-Prescott "fresh-water" rational expectations school, and hydraulic Keynesian models are less well empirically validated.

Jerry Brown, Call Your Guru

Megachurch pastor David Platt is now preaching the gospel of smaller-is-better, urging congregants to give away all they have (after the first $50,000) and wondering what's really going on at, well, certain churches:

When we gather in our church building to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshipping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshipping ourselves.

A Responsibility Agenda

Look homeward, David Brooks advises conservatives in the colonies:

In the U.S., the economic crisis has caused many to question capitalism. But Britain has discredited the center-left agenda with its unrelenting public spending, its public development agencies and disappointing public-private investment partnerships.

Osborne and David Cameron, the party leader, argue that Labour’s decision to centralize power has undermined personal and social responsibility. They are offering a responsibility agenda from top to bottom. Decentralize power so local elected bodies have responsibility. Structure social support to encourage responsible behavior and responsible spending.

If any Republican is looking for a way forward, start by doing what they’re doing across the Atlantic.

Middle March

In the wake of Wednesday's speech, while moderately conservative Obama fan David Brooks doesn't entirely like the health care reform proposal, he thinks that Obama has helped himself by tilting to the supposedly revenue-neutral Senate bill and nodding to malpractice reform. He invokes the magic of the middle:

Best of all for those of us who admire the political craft was the speech’s seductive nature and careful ambiguity. Obama threw out enough rhetorical chum to keep the liberals happy, yet he subtly staked out ground in the center on nearly every substantive issue in order to win over the moderates needed to get anything passed.

Renovating While Rome Is Burning

David Brooks outlines a renewal plan for congressional Republicans that he seems pretty confident they'll ignore. Among his suggestions, as the Obama administration proposes massive new spending on education, health care, and energy:

Republicans could point out that this crisis is not just an opportunity to do other things. It’s a bloomin’ emergency. Robert Barro of Harvard estimates that there is a 30 percent chance of a depression. Warren Buffett says economic activity “has fallen off a cliff” and is not coming back soon....

Republicans could argue that it’s Nero-esque for Democrats to be plotting extensive renovations when the house is on fire. They could point out that history will judge this president harshly if he’s off chasing distant visions while the markets see a void where his banking policy should be.

Three Strikes And We're Broke

David Brooks says the President and Congress have ignored all three cardinal principles of Obama's chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, who said any stimulus package should be timely, targetted, and temporary:

But they’ve created a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord, which has spun off a series of unintended consequences. First, by trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well. The money spent on long-term domestic programs means there may not be enough to jolt the economy now (about $290 billion in spending is pushed off into 2011 and later). The money spent on stimulus, meanwhile, means there’s not enough to truly reform domestic programs like health technology, schools and infrastructure. The measure mostly pumps more money into old arrangements.