David Brooks has an op-ed piece [T$] in today's NY Times in which he endorses Barack Obama for president.
Well, okay, not quite. His main thrust is that, for now, he's strongly in favor of Obama being the Democratic nominee, and for all of the right reasons. But I think I can read a little more between the lines. Here's an excerpt:
[Obama] has a compulsive tendency to see both sides of any issue. Joe Klein of Time counted 50 instances of extremely judicious on-the-one-hand-on the-other-hand formulations in [Obama's recently published] book. He seems like the guy who spends his first 15 minutes at a restaurant debating the relative merits of fish versus meat.
And yet this style is surely the antidote to the politics of the past several years. It is surely true that a president who brings a deliberative style to the White House will multiply his knowledge, not divide it.
It's a very good column. I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Brooks can write, I'm just saying it's pleasantly astonishing to see him step outside of his usual rut.
Imagine a president who uses his brain instead of relying on his gut. Be still my beating heart.
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