The day after the Massachusetts Special Election, pundits did what they usually do after major(?) events.
Most declared that it proves what they have been writing and saying was right all along!
But only David Brooks of the New York Times would say this in such an intellectually dishonest way that it makes me wonder if Brooks thinks his readers are fools.
On the Times blog, fellow columnist Gail Collins and Brooks discussed the Massachusetts results. The issue was whether Obama and the Democrats should still try to pass health care reform. This is what Brooks, who opposed both the House and Senate bills said:
Gail, first, let me give you a hypothetical. Let’s say we had a year-long debate in the run-up to the Iraq war. Let’s say at the end of that debate, 33 percent of Americans thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq, 46 percent thought it was a bad idea and the rest weren’t sure. Then let’s say that there were a bunch of elections in places like New Jersey and Virginia in the middle of this debate and George Bush’s party lost them all badly. Let’s say at the end of this debate there was a senate race in Wyoming in which a Democratic candidate made preventing the war a central plank in his campaign. Let’s say Bush went out to Wyoming and told voters they had to support the Republican to save the Iraq invasion. And let’s say the Democrat still went on to win that Wyoming Senate seat by more than 5 percentage points.
Would you have advised George Bush under these circumstances to go ahead and invade Iraq? Would you have advised him to call a special lame duck session of Congress to push through a war resolution before the new senator could be seated? Would you have advised him to invent some legislative trick so he could still have his invasion? Or would you have said, George, I know you really want to invade Iraq. I know you think an invasion will do a lot of good for the world. But the American people are pretty clear about this issue. Maybe you should show a little doubt. Maybe you ought to listen and give this whole thing a second look.
Now anyone who was paying attention during the Bush years and who regularly read David Brooks during that time knows two things –
1) Bush would have done exactly what Brooks imagines – he would have invaded Iraq despite the poll numbers and election results and
2) David Brooks would have supported that decision in his column.
Brooks would begin his column by reporting that the public is opposed to invading Iraq. He would criticize the Bush administration for the poor job they had done in convincing people that invading Iraq is important. He would pontificate about the importance of the popular will in a democracy.
And then he would write that sometimes leaders have to make unpopular choices in the name of national security, compare Bush to Winston Churchill and Harry Truman and support invading Iraq.