New York Times columnist David Brooks is angry. He’s upset because he thinks the political center in this country is being torn asunder. To exemplify his complaint about the loss of the reasonable middle, Brooks has penned his column describing the life and anger of a typical centrist called “Ben.” Brooks describes fictitious Ben’s life, his morals and how he might have voted in the 2008 election (Ben “voted for one of the outsiders. This is not time for a tinkerer, he figured. It’s time for a demolition man.”) and how he might vote in the future (Ben is “going to find that he and voters like him unwittingly created a political culture in which compromise is impermissible, in which institutions are decimated by lone-wolf narcissists who have no interest in or talent for crafting legislation…. In a few years’ time, Ben is going to look for something else.”)
Here’s the problem: Why couldn’t Brooks use an actual example? If he’s writing about those who voted for Obama 2 years ago and are now experiencing buyer’s remorse, why not actually quote one by name. Some of his column sounds strikingly like Brooks could be talking about himself in terms of his calculations for why he supported Obama and why he’s less than thrilled with his choice right now. If that’s the case, why hide behind a caricature? He’s an opinion columnist; he’s paid to give us his opinion so give it.
This same fundamental flaw can be found in Chuck Schumer’s attempt at a bestseller, a book called “Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time.” Schumer was supposedly trying to write about the majority of people in the middle-class but for some reason he couldn’t actually find a single example of his alleged majority so he made up a “typical” family. What nonsense.
If Brooks is upset that electing Barak Obama is not working out the way he’d like, there are plenty of real folks he could have interviewed to make his case. But he does little prove his point about the moderates who supposedly define the “free labor tradition” when he has to make one up out of thin air.