http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/opinion/26brooks.html?ref=opinion

‘Some of us like to think big. We thought at the beginning of this debt crisis that it might be possible to reach a Grand Bargain. This deal would make a serious dent in the country’s awful debt problem. It would begin to reform entitlements. It would involve enough revenue to forestall ruinous cuts in domestic programs.’

Here is the laughable opening paragraph of David Brooks’ latest column titled Congress In the Lead.  It’s all there, the self-congratulatory style, Big Thinking as an imitation of real thought, almost bursting the seams of its’ rhetorical frame. He can’t let go of The Grand Bargain, it won’t happen, as he reports, but the capacious intellectual vacuity of this idea has irresistible appeal to our writer; Mr. Brooks has never been modest, although he is sometimes coy.  But in just under 800 words, in his inimitably breathless foreshortened style, he narrates the denouement of the Fake Debt Crisis, in which the lead switches from President Obama to the Congress, meaning the Republican controlled House and the Democratically controlled Senate. As the deadline of August 2, 2011 approaches, the melodramatic tension increases to a fever pitch. It is great television, perfect for the small screen.  And Mr. Brooks is having a grand time, reassuring his avid readers, that reasonable establishmentarians will prevail, and a Default will just be avoided, by the actions of big thinkers like himself, among others.  As the American Empire’s slow but steady decline continues apace, with all the garnishes that were once the envy of the huddled masses, we must feel a certain good fortune in having Public Men of the caliber of Mr. Brooks: to lead an enlightened public discourse and to have such men who continually remind us of their public virtue.

Political Cynic