Open thread for night owls: In which we again note the existence of David Brooks

I don't tend to pick on editorial opinion-haver David Brooks much, mostly because it just seems cruel at this point. The ratcheting right of the Republican Party has not been kind to him. His past editorializing has always consisted of explaining why bipartisanship consists of doing the thing the Republicans want to do and calling it done; as the things the Republican Party wants to do get more extreme and/or obviously damaging and/or outright comical, Brooks seems to go to great pains to ignore all of that and just trundle steadily along, patiently explaining to everyone why the American people living out their lives on East Applebee Lane want to do the majority of these increasingly silly things because people like David Brooks say so.

When Brooks got roundly plastered for his Friday column, premised around the notion that Obama never had a plan to avoid the sequester when in fact Obama, well, did and still does, it was just par for the course. Now let's gather round and hear Brooks explain what he really meant, yet again, which is that Obama is apparently trying to be the "liberal Reagan," which would be news to all actual American liberals, but that being properly centrist and bipartisanish means knocking that off and doing most of what the Republicans demand. Again.

My main complaint with Obama is that he promised to move us beyond these stale debates, but he's, instead, become a participant in them.

My complaint is that he doesn't ride around the White House on a horse, but I'm willing to accept my disappointment if you can accept yours. While I feel for all those that expected a politician to transcend politics during a time of extreme political entrenchment, Obama included, I also think those people are a bit on the naive side.

My dream Obama would abandon the big government versus small government argument. He'd point out that in a mature, aging society, government isn't going anywhere. The issue is not size but sclerosis.

He does that all the time. He gives speeches about how we could save bucketloads of money through government abandonment of pointless, lobbyist-fueled tax subsidies to gigantic, well-off businesses and individuals. But that's not the "sclerosis" Republicans have in mind, so it's not going anywhere. We'll continue this below the fold ...

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