Political Observer wonders at Brooks’ ineptness!

David Brooks considers himself to be a ‘Political Sage’, and as such he offers a seven point evaluation, of Kamala Harris’ worthiness to hold the office of President. Should The Reader recall Brook’s ‘The Collapse of the Dream Palaces’ of April 28, 2003 War Mongering, and utterly dull-witted apologetic for the Iraq War! Some Political Crimes are not forgivable, however Mr. Brooks lives in the ever malleable political present of New York Times propaganda:

Editor: Let me offer evaluations of Brooks Chatter, from his categories.

Toughness:

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If playful aggression is a thing, she projects it.

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Editor: Brooks likes Kamala’s Showmanship!

Leadership and management skills:

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On the other hand, from her time as the San Francisco district attorney straight through her time as vice president, Harris has earned a reputation for degrading underlings and burning through staff.

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Editor: Mr. Brooks willfully forgets Harris’ jailing of the parents of truant children and her de facto pardon on Steven Mnuchin of One West Bank!

Analytical abilities:

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“My bias has always been to speak factually, to speak accurately, to speak precisely about issues and matters that have potentially great consequence,” she told The Times last fall. “I find it off-putting to just engage in platitudes. I much prefer to deconstruct an issue and speak of it in a way that hopefully elevates public discourse and educates the public.”

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Editor: The Self-Praise of Kamala Harris fall under the rubric of ‘Analytical Abilities’, in the political vocabulary of David Brooks? Or is this just comic relief ?

Vision: C.

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She hasn’t shown that she has the kind of coherent worldview — the way, say, Biden does — you need to be a good decision maker in the White House. Over the past few years, when Harris has been asked to articulate her overall philosophy, she often produces a meaningless word salad, ripe for ridicule.

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So in interviews she gave during her 2020 run she would often revert to positions that some progressives loved, even though they were politically suicidal in the swing states. She said she wanted to ban fracking, decriminalize illegal immigration, end the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal and eliminate private health insurance. Republicans are now making hay out of these statements, but it’s not clear how much she believes what she claimed to believe back then.

Editor: Kamala Harris is a political opportunist!

Relatability: B.

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Her larger problem of course is that she’s a member of the progressive educated elite from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her father was a Stanford professor and her mother was a cancer researcher. She has lived her life in a very unusual slice of America. This is not an ideal background if your job is to win over working-class voters in western Pennsylvania, small-town Michigan and suburban Georgia.

Editor: Harris is part of an out of touch Elite.

Composure: C.

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In 2021, after she was tasked with finding the root causes of the immigration crisis, NBC’s Lester Holt asked her if she would visit the U.S.-Mexico border. She replied, “At some point, you know, I — we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole, this whole — this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.” Holt reminded her that in fact she hadn’t yet visited the border. Harris cut back on media interviews after that humiliating encounter.

Editor: In sum Harris is not simply inept, but clueless!

Overall reputation: C

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In February of 2023, my Times colleagues Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers and Peter Baker surveyed Democratic views on Harris. Here is the core of their reporting:

“The painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country. Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her,” they wrote.

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Editor: this would-be defence of Harris falls apart from within itself! Though there are 237 words left.

Political Observer