If you subscribe to the print edition of the New York Times and you are a regular reader of both David Brooks and Paul Krugman, you will notice that their essays mirror one another,and share contiguous print space, in that they take as their subject Mitt Romney, or perhaps, more pointedly his ‘success’ as the CEO of Bain Capital as demonstrative of his ability, his singular qualification to run for President, as opposed to the other candidates whose corporate resumes lack that impressive experiential garnish. Brooks takes what might be judged a stand of dubious concern but favors- but let me quote one of his thoughts, here expressed as a telling aphorism:

“In sum, great presidents are often aristocrats and experienced political insiders. They experience great setbacks. They feel the presence of God’s hand on their every move.”

To utter a breathtaking tautology“Great Presidents” neatly fits into the frame Mr. Brooks has constructed.( I know that I am drastically foreshortening the sense of Mr. Brooks commentary.) But the reader must carefully examine the deeply equivocal rhetoric that he constructs to make his arguments: it seems almost Hegelian in the utterance of statement and near counter statement, which leads the apprehensive reader into exploitable intellectual muddle rather than into an anticipated and desired clarification. This could be argued to be the position of the regular reader of Mr. Brooks’ essays.

Krugman remains utterly skeptical,doubtful, not to say suspicious of the experience of Mr. Romney at Bain Capital as demonstrative of his qualification and aspiration to the Presidency and directly and cogently make his arguments: America Isn’t a Corporation.

Now, reading both of these essays in such close proximity, might in the mind of the respectable bourgeois reader of the Times, produce a cognitive dissonance that might be satisfied only by writing a letter to the editor, or perhaps even a goad to the birth of some independent thinking on the part of that very reader: one can hope.

Political Observer