David Brooks professes himself shocked -- shocked! -- that Barack Obama is a politician. But Barack Obama hasn't changed. Most of the instances of cynicism that Brooks points out -- voting "present" in the Illinois assembly, running for president soon after he entered the Senate, avoiding free-wheeling forums and debates -- were true months ago, when Brooks was filling the margins of his reporter's pad with hearts containing Obama's initials. By that point, Obama had already pulled out of most of the scheduled forums in the primary, already kicked off an absurdly early run for the presidency, already cast all his votes in the Illinois assembly. And Brooks was writing things like this is "a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual." That worldview hasn't changed, if indeed it ever existed. What changed is that Obama became the Democrat. When Obama was running in the Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton was The Democrat. Hyping the cerebral, occasionally conservative-sounding Obama was the interesting angle for heterodox conservatives. He may not have been the Republican, but he was The Not-Democrat. But now he is The Democrat. Expect Brooks, and many of the other conservatives who discovered an unexpected admiration for Obama, to jump ship rather quickly. Not because of anything Obama has done, of course. The instances of cynicism that Brooks identifies are no worse than McCain's embrace of Bush, his appearance with Falwell, his abandonment of his own global warming bill, his decision to game the public financing system by using it as collateral for a loan, his transformation from defender of the estate tax to scourge of it, his evolution from skeptic of the Bush tax cuts, to preserver of them, etc, etc, etc. David Brooks hasn't suddenly discovered political cynicism. It's just that we've entered the general election. Obama is the Democrat. Brooks is a Republican. It's sensible, even predictable, for Brooks to transition back to McCain. But he shouldn't pretend he's being guided by some sort of political purity principle.
