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David Brooks in his August 5, 2008, column "Where's the Landslide?" claims he has the answer to why Obama may not be pulling away from McCain in this year of discontent with the GOP and the last eight years of Bush rule.
Brooks claims that Obama is a "sojourner," an outsider who is hard to place, which causes voters to be wary and uncertain of him.
"Sojourner" comes from the opening quotation in Obama's book "Dreams from My Father" in which he quotes Chronicles: "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers."
There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.
Brooks goes on to theorize that when we judge candidates, we judge the individuals and also the milieus that produced them. We judge them for the connections that exist beyond choice, according to Brooks.
David Brooks' number one "Top Surprise" about the New Hampshire Primary:
1. Republicans voted in nearly the same numbers as Democrats.
Yes, in David Brooks' world, when 50,000 more people vote for Democrats than for Republicans in a state with a tiny population that has been GOP-dominated for generations; when 10,000 less Republicans vote in 2008 than in the last contested Republican primary; and when the second place finisher for the Democrats gets 16,000 votes more than the first-place Republican finisher... he calls it a tie.
I know I shouldn't complain about all the nice attention we get up heaah every four years, but the sheer volume of absurdities issued by the floating island of DC elite pundits this time around is breathtaking.
(For those of you who don't know, "andyj" is a newly elected State Representative from Nashua. Thanks, Rep. Andy Edwards! - promoted by Dean Barker)
David Brooks has not read Al Gore's book. For every "theory" he's selectively pulled from Gore's book, there is a wealth of supporting information contained and referenced in The Assault on Reason. You can't really evaluate Brooks's arguments using reason, because he's arguing against reason itself - the obvious theme of Gore's book.
