I started to write this post last week but got sidetracked. Maybe it was for the best because we have a follow-up today that actually makes my point for me.
Last week David Brooks wrote a standard piece of conservative claptrap 'bout how - and this is his own description - "the Obama budget is a liberal, big government document that should make moderates nervous." It was as incoherent and self-contradictory as usual and I couldn't see any point to bothering to refute it just like there's hardly ever much point in bothering to refute the insensate ravings of any of the Village idiots.
But I was going to go after this follow-up (prior to the aforementioned sidetracking) as an illustration of strategic ass-kissing. See, whereas the rest of us have learned to ignore the blitherings of mush-brained harlots like Brooks, Howie Kurtz, George Will, and Tom...what's-his-name? Friedman, that's it...Obama's people knew just what to do to get a loudmouth pundit to back off.
Kiss his ass. Viz:
The column generated a large positive response from moderate Obama supporters who are anxious about where the administration is headed. It was not so popular inside the White House. Within a day, I had conversations with four senior members of the administration and in the interest of fairness, I thought I’d share their arguments with you today.
Not bad. Here's how they probably did it:
DEALING WITH A CONSERVATIVE PUNDIT
LESSON ONE
Beltway Blitherers are convinced that they are Terribly Important and Serious People even though we all know they're hacks picked for their connections and that intelligence not only isn't a required virtue it's a positive obstacle to furthering their careers. If these guys had been smart enough to understand, say, Horton Hears a Who by the time they were 30, on their own and without a learner's permit and tutors to guide them (Billy Kristol and Jonah Goldberg being prime examples), they never would have been hired. Who, after all, is David Brooks to be telling anybody anything? He's a nobody. He's done nothing, thought nothing, and written nothing that lasts past the time it takes you to read it.
"Perfect!" the NYT owner cried. "I must have him!" And so he was inflicted upon us even though we had done nothing to deserve such punishment, and there he sits, the self-appointed arbiter of political correctness, sharing his "opinions" with us whether or not we want to be shared with. What to do with such?
Coddle him. Talk to him as if you are sharing something deep, as if he is the only one in the civilized world who will understand it. Trust me, his pomposity and self-importance are all he's got. Feed them.
Overpower him. Give him personal conversations with not one, not two, but FOUR "senior members of the administration". Stroke him til your hands burn.
LESSON TWO
Do not make him come to you. You go to him. Kiss his ring and the hem of his garment, call him "Your Majesty" a time or two (he'll like the sound of that), and then ever so gently point out that even though he is usually right in all things, O Wise One, this one time he might just possibly have been acting upon a certain amount of misinformation and you've just come to correct the record because you know from his previous statements that he wouldn't want to speak without knowing the whole story. (Try not to gag as you say this; it's a dead give-away.)
LESSON THREE
Bowing and scraping and begging his pardon, lay before him in tones of obsequious gravity a few of the facts that show him to be a moran, answer his moronic questions as if they are a test of your intelligence rather than his, and as if they betray a depth of wisdom staggering in its complexity, and then back out the door bent over double, without lifting your eyes in his August Presence.
The result of these three lessons isn't the column I linked to. That's minor. It's this one.
The Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, but let’s face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided. The House minority leader, John Boehner, has called for a federal spending freeze for the rest of the year. In other words, after a decade of profligacy, the Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate.
The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is “no.” They’ve apparently decided that it’s easier to repeat the familiar talking points than actually think through a response to the extraordinary crisis at hand.
If the Republicans wanted to do the country some good, they’d embrace an entirely different approach.
And so on. Bingo. A Beltway Buzzard neutralized.
You gotta give Obama's people credit. I don't know who any of the four "senior members" were but they produced a miracle: they turned David Brooks into a spent force.
Alright, so that wasn't so hard given where they started. It's still more than Harry Reid or the Democrat Congress ever did. Points to them, and I hope it was worth it.
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