Normally I wouldn’t call someone a sap, even someone wrong and, well, sappy as often as David Brooks. But calling him a sap is not an insulting slur; it is a hearty endorsement of his column today, which begins: “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.”
The remainder of the column copiously documents that self-indictment (emphasis added):
- “When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. “
- “When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.”
- “I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.”
- “This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible.”
- “Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around…. But remember, I’m a sap…
- …. “The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful! I was hoping the president would give a cynical nation something unconventional, but, as you know, I’m a sap.”
- “Being a sap, I still believe that the president’s soul would like to do something about the country’s structural problems. I keep thinking he’s a few weeks away from proposing serious tax reform and entitlement reform…
- “The White House has decided to wage the campaign as fighting liberals. I guess I understand the choice, but I still believe in the governing style Obama talked about in 2008. I may be the last one. I’m a sap.”
Brooks’s confession is admirable, but he needn’t have singled himself out for such harsh (though clearly deserved) treatment. All those who continued to believe that Obama believed in what Brooks calls “Obamaism” — moderation, moving beyond hyper-partisanship and politics as usual, tax and entitlement reform, post-racialism, etc. — after “Stimulus” 1, Obamacare, pervasive class warfare and anti-business rhetoric, larding the unions from the quickly diminishing public trough, staffing the Justice Dept. with pro-preference zealots who abhor even the idea of colorblind equality, etc., etc. — are and remain, as Brooks puts it, saps.
