There's a lot that's weird about David Brooks' column yesterday, but I don't think it's the sort of thing liberals should dismiss. What you're seeing right now, with Obama looking likely to win the election, is an effort to define the center. Jon Meacham defines it as the center-right. David Brooks, through "Patio Man," defines it as the right-right. In either case, it's an attempt to cement a conventional wisdom that circumscribes a President Obama's options. Central to the battle will be how folks choose to understand the financial crisis. And this can go either way. On the one hand, the crisis could be seen one of those historically disruptive events that punctures the system's preference for gridlock and creates a space for bold action, much like JFK's assassination or the Great Depression. But Brooks is trying to define it differently as a troubling crisis of uncertainty that will trigger a reflexive status quo bias in the electorate. Under this model, the crisis explains away Obama's presidency -- oh, he only got elected because the stock market bottomed out, not because people agreed with him -- rather than enables his agenda. You can see it in Brooks' column. "[Democrats], or any party, will run astray if they threaten the mood of chastened sobriety that has swept over the subdivisions." Has a "mood of chastened sobriety" overwhelmed our exurbs? Dunno. Indeed, it's not even really clear what that would imply. What is a "chastened sobriety?" But if elites become convinced that it has, and they define it as a popular resistance to actual government action, that will be rather bad for a President Obama. Which is one reason I'd like to see liberals wrest back the concept of sobriety. There's nothing sober about letting carbon scorch the earth and cause untold trillions in economic damage. There's nothing sober about letting health care costs crush the federal budget and explode our deficit. There's nothing sober about letting a recession deepen rather than accepting the countercyclical spending that will restart the economy. The people who want to head off these catastrophes are being responsible. The people who want to disrupt action on looming threats are being reckless. When the car is headed off a cliff, there's nothing prudent about refusing to change its course.
