"There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor," says David Brooks. "Caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once."Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen respond on grounds of interconnectedness. Matt does a good job folding both health care and climate change into an overall "growth" agenda, and I'd back him up: The administration is obsessed with long-term growth, as well they should be. Without it, the accumulated national debt will crush the country. (For more on this, see David Leonhardt's essay, "The Big Fix." I hope it won't ruin anything if I reveal that "The Big Fix" is growth.)But I'd make the argument on grounds of simple urgency: If a patient has cancer and heart disease, her doctor doesn't have the luxury of treating only one or the other. Whether history is "calling" anyone is immaterial. (I guess you could say the problems are interconnected in that they both relate to "survival.") The budget projections are calling us to solve health care before it wrecks the American economy and the climate projections are calling us to curb carbon emissions before they roast the lonely rock we call home. Brooks can, I guess, wander into George Will's territory and take issue with these projections. But the relevant question here is the urgency of the problems. Brooks is offering a characterological observation -- "self-flattering" -- in a sentence that requires an empirical judgment. CONNECTED OR URGENT?
"There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor," says David Brooks. "Caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once."Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen respond on grounds of interconnectedness. Matt does a good job folding both health care and climate change into an overall "growth" agenda, and I'd back him up: The administration is obsessed with long-term growth, as well they should be. Without it, the accumulated national debt will crush the country. (For more on this, see David Leonhardt's essay, "The Big Fix." I hope it won't ruin anything if I reveal that "The Big Fix" is growth.)But I'd make the argument on grounds of simple urgency: If a patient has cancer and heart disease, her doctor doesn't have the luxury of treating only one or the other. Whether history is "calling" anyone is immaterial. (I guess you could say the problems are interconnected in that they both relate to "survival.") The budget projections are calling us to solve health care before it wrecks the American economy and the climate projections are calling us to curb carbon emissions before they roast the lonely rock we call home. Brooks can, I guess, wander into George Will's territory and take issue with these projections. But the relevant question here is the urgency of the problems. Brooks is offering a characterological observation -- "self-flattering" -- in a sentence that requires an empirical judgment. 
