New York Times columnist David Brooks made an astonishing observation about President Obama on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday.
"Sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
DAVID GREGORY, HOST: David Brooks, let me start with you. My big take away, the president is setting a tone here with Republicans putting him on notice that yes, taxes are going to go up, and that he's going to drive a pretty hard bargain on a lot of different issues rather than try to bring them into the fold. He doesn't feel like compromise is going to work at this point.
DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah, well, first let's just say that what is happening in Washington right now is pathetic. When you think about what the Revolutionary generation did, what the Civil War generation did, what the World War II generation did. We’re asking not to bankrupt our children, and we’ve got a shambolic, dysfunctional process. Now I think most of the blame still has to go to the Republicans. They have had a brain freeze since the election. They have no strategy. They, you don't know what they want, and they haven't decided what they want.
But if I could fault President Obama, I would say that sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization. He comes in here, and he will not, he'll talk with Boehner. He won't talk with the other Republicans. He hasn't built their trust. Boehner actually made a pretty serious concession, $800 billion in tax revenues, probably willing to go up on rates. But the trust wasn't there to get that done. And if the president wants to get stuff done over the next four years, it's got to be a lot more than making the intellectual concessions. It's got to get to the place where Republicans say, “Okay, we'll take a risk. This guy won't screw us.” They do not feel that right now.
Pretty extraordinary thing for a Times columnist to say, don't you think?
