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David Brooks' take on the transition... - Printable Version +- MacResource (https://forums.macresource.com) +-- Forum: My Category (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: 'Friendly' Political Ranting (https://forums.macresource.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6) +--- Thread: David Brooks' take on the transition... (/showthread.php?tid=66733) |
David Brooks' take on the transition... - vision63 - 11-21-2008 He's essentially a non-traditionalist Republican. As close to a love letter as he'll ever dispense. Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.). The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law). This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed. the rest via the link http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/opinion/21brooks.html?_r=2&em Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - hal - 11-21-2008 "This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs." probably boring as hell to have a beer with - these are just the kind of people we need to run the country - the best of the best, dare I say... the elite... Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - Mac1337 - 11-21-2008 Let's call them the Best and the Brightest II. Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - lafinfil - 11-21-2008 You left out one of the best lines - "Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists." LOL I've said it before - I like Brooks. although I don't always agree with him, but I think he is honest. He's thoughtful and insightful and well reasoned. Nice overview on the transition. Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - $tevie - 11-21-2008 I can't thank you enough for bringing this to my attention, vision63. That is a beautifully articulated explanation of why so many of us are excited about what is to come. Thanks again! Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - vision63 - 11-21-2008 I'm happy to share. Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - swampy - 11-21-2008 There's a difference between sense and horse sense. Some of the dumbest people I've ever known had degrees from prestigious Ivy League schools. I'll never forget when George H.W. Bush was televised going through a supermarket checkout line. He had never seen a POP scanner before. Even my brainiac cousin, PHD in inner space weather from MIT, didn't know you had to have a fishing license in order to fish in Florida (and he's a native Floridian). My point being that many of these "elite" have no way of relating to what it's like in the "real world" so I'm not impressed with the so called educational credentials. Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - mikeylikesit - 11-21-2008 swampy wrote: That whole thing about Bush and the scanner has been debunked Swampy, surprised you didn't know. I'll agree to the extent Robert MacNamara was one of the best and brilliant of course he would have been out of the cabinet if Kennedy had lived; Johnson was no match for him. Obama seems to be a match for them all. Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - vision63 - 11-21-2008 But most of Obama's appointees come from humbleness, not blue-blood. Re: David Brooks' take on the transition... - Stizzealth - 11-21-2008 You can go to Harvard (or any other Ivy League) to get stupid. Any fact or statistic can be twisted to one ideological standpoint or another. Living near a few very prominent elite insitutions, I can assure that some of the most clueless people I know walk the halls of schools people pay $50,000 a year to go to. There is a very good reason that conservatism is not well represented among tenured professors and lecturers. First of all, those that cannot do something teach something, and more importantly, the life of a college professor is enormously separate from the life of Joe Six-Pack. One can deal in theories and platitudes about social wages and economic justice and everything else, but there's no panacea for the human condition. |