"... the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence."
So Sarah Palin is now George W. Bush?
He goes on to add that Palin,
"has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness."
... Again with the Bush reference.
Aside from thinking Palin is too much like Bush (an idea he seems to want to advance, based on the number of times he references it), Brooks also seems to believe that elitisim is, in fact, good (he notes that,"Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement.") ... This is quite true, but it is most certainly also at odds with Ronald Reagan's conservative philosophy.
Of course, my long-term concern here is that the "conservative" writers the mainstream media most frequently cites are really not that conservative. Writers such as Brooks have learned that the quickest way to earn the plaudits of the New York and DC media elite is to be critical of fellow conservatives.
This is especially true, the closer one gets to an election (feel free to say good things about conservatives during odd years). David Brooks -- and a hand-full of his highly-respected conservative intellectual friends -- have learned that the way a conservative can be seen as having "matured" is to criticize fellow conservatives ...
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