Friday, November 21, 2008

Most bizarre Obama effect: David Brooks is readable

This is truly weird.

An anomaly in the NYT's RSS feed means I don't see who's writing editorials with interesting titles. So I am running into David Brooks on occasion.

That sounds bad, but here's the weird bit.

Now that he's not trying to excuse the inexcusable, Brooks is actually readable ...
Op-Ed Columnist - The Insider’s Crusade - NYTimes.com

... This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life — that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C., that they’ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.

And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition...

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