NEOLIBERALISM VANQUISHED:

NEOLIBERALISM VANQUISHED: When David Brooks sticks to territory he knows, like elite political journalism, rather than, say, the nuances of how yuppies dress their babies, he makes a lot more sense. Case in point: his column today on "The Vanishing Neoliberal." His basic history is essentially correct. He says:

Neoliberals coalesced around two small magazines, The New Republic and The Washington Monthly... They tended to be hawkish on foreign policy, positive about capitalism, reformist when it came to the welfare state, and urbane but not militant on feminism and other social issues... Influenced by their sensibility, many major news organizations became neoliberal institutions, whether they knew it or not.

And he is right to note that today's liberals came of age in an era of reacting to bomb throwing extremists like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove. Consequently the market for neo-liberal journals declined. But perhaps because he is ideologically pre-disposed to favor neo-liberals over their leftier counterparts, Brooks misses a few key points.He notes that TNR's circulation has declined but fails to note that the Monthly shifted leftward and enjoyed a circulation increase in the last several years (nor does he mention that Kevin Drum, who he cites as a typical lefty blogger, works for the Monthly.) He also fails to note the rising circulations of TAP and The Nation. And Brooks makes a rather curious assertion, that The Economist's high circulation is caused by the increasing number of Independents (this comes from Brooks' usual handwringing over our polarized political debate), which seems odd since The Economist is a news magazine that people across the spectrum who may not agree with its libertarian editorials read for its dispatches on little-covered regions. But most signiifcantly, Brooks doesn't acknowledge the substantive policy basis for the turn away from neo-liberalism. Today's liberal jouranlists, bloggers and activists aren't merely disinclined towards neo-liberalism as a political strategy. Seeing the devastating effects of free trade agreements like NAFTA on Mexican farmers and American workers, and the disaster of the Iraq War that many neo-liberals supported, they reach a new set of conclusions. Brooks' characterization of the new cadre as merely reactionary on a political level, rather than acknowledging their substantive critiques, shows we can still count on a little lightweight punditry in even his stronger columns.

--Ben Adler