David Brooks Joins Tom Friedman In Calling For Authoritarian Government

Tom Friedman has long been an admirer of China's version of democracy, which is to not have a democracy.

Yesterday David Brooks moved outside his comfort zone of evaluating the crispness of trouser creases to opine it's time to Yield more authority to the President.

No link for David Brooks' #SlatePitch Nonsense-trolling, but you can find it at the New York Times if you like.

Strengthen the Presidency

By DAVID BROOKS
December 12, 2013

....

We’re in a period of reform stagnation. It’s possible that years will go by without the passage of a major piece of legislation. Meanwhile, Washington nearly strangles on a gnat, like this week’s teeny budget compromise.

He quotes an article by Francis Fukuyama (the premature The End of History author), apparently upset that there's a lot of history still going on.

Fukuyama ultimately throws up his hands. Things would be better, he observes, if we had a more unified parliamentary system, with more administrative discretion. But we don’t. “So we have a problem.”

But there is a way out: Make the executive branch more powerful.

I can't wait to hear him explain why we should give more power to Obama, who's assuming a lot of legislative power already, and screwing up everything while doing so.

This should be a doozy.

This is a good moment to advocate greater executive branch power because we’ve just seen a monumental example of executive branch incompetence: the botched Obamacare rollout.

Doozy status: High. We must cede more power to the executive precisely because it's so massively incompetent.

But don't worry-- See, Obama has learned how incompetent he is, and therefore he can be trusted not to abuse this new power Brooks would yield to him.

It’s important to advocate greater executive branch power in a chastened mood.

He's so chastened he's assuming more power to rewrite the law as he likes, and to vow to Americans that he intends to rule contrary to their preferences.

He's so chastened he's giving speeches saying "Fuck you America, Obamacare stays."

It’s not that the executive branch is trustworthy; it’s just that we’re better off when the presidency is strong than we are when the rentier groups are strong, or when Congress, which is now completely captured by the rentier groups, is strong.

"Rentier" means those seeking rents or other goods from government. He previously identified lobbyists as being rentiers.

But he doesn't identify Obama as being beholden to rentiers.

Obama himself hasn't been captured by rentiers so much as he is their apotheosis.
He is a walking favor-bank, the spirit redistributive justice made flesh, taking from those outside his political power bloc and delivering it to those within it.

But Brooks doesn't acknowledge this -- the past five years don't exist for David Brooks. For Brooks, Obama remains the same reasonable, idealistic, pragmatic, ethical post-partisan progressive whose pants he was once so smitten with at their first meeting.

Now Brooks will explain why we must make the executive more powerful. You will not be surprised to discover that the first reason is to pass a bill that Brooks favors-- the Comprehensive Immigration bill.

Here are the advantages. First, it is possible to mobilize the executive branch to come to policy conclusion on something like immigration reform. It’s nearly impossible for Congress to lead us to a conclusion about anything.

We must permanently change our system of government in order to achieve a few short-term political wins for David Fucking Brooks.

We don’t need bigger government. We need more unified authority. Take power away from the rentier groups who dominate the process. Allow people in those authorities to exercise discretion.

That is, give the president further power to ignore the law as he pleases.

Incredible.

Update: David Brooks... from June of this year. Like six months ago.

"We should never trust concentrated power."
-- David Brooks

They're all jokes.

Thanks to @DrewMtips.

posted by Ace at 12:46 PM

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