I don't know what it is, exactly, that's helped to shake David Brooks out of his usual torpor; i suspect it's some combination of an election season that favors his kind of muddled moderation, a sense that any change from Bush is worthwhile, and in no small measure, the vague inspiration of Barack Obama, which suits the vague intellectual-isms Brooks pretends to.
Brooks has been turning in a string of fairly sensible, notable columns, and yesterday's was up there. It was one of the most reasoned examinations of the election from the Republican perspective I've seen, and if Democrats were smart, they'd pay attention, especially to this:
McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. Now they are running a much more conventional race, the kind McCain himself used to ridicule.
The man who lampooned the Message of the Week is now relentlessly on message (as observers of his fine performance at Saddleback Church can attest). The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily. It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention.
Some old McCain hands are dismayed. John Weaver, the former staff member who helped run the old McCain operation, argues that this campaign does not do justice to the man. The current advisers say they have no choice. They didn’t choose the circumstances of this race. Their job is to cope with them.
And the inescapable fact is: It is working. Everyone said McCain would be down by double digits at this point. He’s nearly even. Everyone said he’d be vastly outspent. That hasn’t happened. A long-shot candidacy now seems entirely plausible.
I think Brooks is more on to the dynamics as they're playing out right now than almost anyone... certainly Frank Rich, who's become the best example of the muddled political thinking of blind faith Obama supporters - suggesting that "if people only knew who McCain is, Obama would be running away in a romp" misses just the point Rich makes early on in his column: that people feel they've been exposed to a lot of Obama... and still don't seem that thrilled with him.
This isn't my "I now see how McCain can be attractive to a voter like me"; quite the opposite - I think Brooks is right that McCain's getting his act together, and it's working. And it scares me to death that he could succeed at something - succeeding George W Bush from the GOP side - that should be hopeless. But that, I think, is the real indication of where we are. And Democrats - the ones in the True Believer mode, anyway - ignore this stuff with a complacency that is I think most dangerous of all. But I'll finish that thought in a moment.
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