David Brooks is Just Shocked: What a Sap

Today David Brooks says he was a sap to have been fooled by Barack Obama, who Brooks thought was such a nice guy, but he was deceived because now Mr. Obama is acting all testy and saying unflattering things about Republicans who refuse to raise anyone's taxes under any circumstances.

Poor David, who is either a wuss or a more subtle Republican strategist and deviant than I had imagined. If he is the latter, than the game his is playing is to try to beguile Obama to remain in his passive mode, which would insure a one term Presidency.

I am hoping Mr. Obama has finally appreciated the nature of Mr. Boehner, McConnell, Ryan, Cantor. They talk pretty in the conference room and then step out of the room and say, "The President shows no leadership. He is not a serious man. He wants to kill the economy with taxes and over regulation. He is bad for America. Our most important goal is to be sure he does not get re elected."

And, until now, Mr. Obama has been saying, "Thank you. May I have another?"

Now, Mr. Obama has finally said, "To Hell with you."

And Mr. Brooks is oh, so offended and feels duped. The marshmallow has finally decided he'd rather be steak, if he's going to be burned anyway.

What Jackie Love Tells Us About Newspeople

Listening to Ray Suarez interviewing Michael Becshloss on the PBS News Hour last night, I was astonished.

I had not been astonished when I saw the same sort of interview on a network news show, when the newscaster, a woman gushed on about how much Jackie loved Jack, and she played the recording of Jackie telling her interviewer (after JFK was in his grave) that she told Kennedy she wanted to bring the children home to the White House and die with him right there on the East Lawn, rather than be whisked away to some safe bomb shelter and live life without him.

Now, you have to remember, this is not Jackie actually talking to her husband. This is Jackie talking to an interviewer who is going to write about Jackie and her marriage to JFK.

This is a woman who has everything to gain by promulgating the image of a wonderful marriage to a charismatic, romantic President.

I don't know, they may have loved each other deeply, passionately, eternally.

But we cannot know from this sort of evidence. Anyone who thinks about it should know that much.

And why should we doubt her version of their storybook marriage?

By now the many examples of Jack's infidelities are well known, from famous women (Marilyn Monroe) to women we've most of us never heard of. Now, that doesn't mean he didn't love Jackie, after his own fashion. Men, at least some men, separate the type of love they have for their wives from the sporting sexual adventures they have with other women. But it at least makes you pause.

And then there was Jackie's own behavior after JFK's death. She married, most would believe, for money and power. If she did that once, might she not have done that the first time? After all, she came from some money, but she was marrying far more money, and she was attaching herself to a winner, a real Washington catch, war hero, son of an Ambassador, part of a wealthy Boston family.

What made me think of all this was a story my father told about Jackie Kennedy. He was a young government worker and got a phone call from this local newspaper reporter for a Washington paper, Jackie Bouvier. Her questions were the usual and expected variety, but what he really remembered about her was, "That awful, brassy voice." This all came up as we were watching Jackie give a guided tour of the White House on television, speaking in that now familiar breathy, hushed voice.

"What a phony!" my father expostulated.

He could not believe that act.

Which brings me back to the New Hour and Ray Suarez and the historian Richard Beschloss, neither of whom seemed capable of entertaining an alternative explanation, both of whom were completely taken in by that breathy voice on the tape.

Makes you wonder what other, more important, things this news correspondent and most especially this historian, who is supposed to deal with historical documents professionally, what other things they have got wrong by simple gullibility.

Ten Years Ago

Everybody has a story to tell about Sept 11, 2011, and mine is no more important than any other.

But, now that I live in New Hampshire, I realize, I was a little more directly involved than many of my countrymen.

That morning, I had my regular 7 AM conference at Georgetown University, which ended at 8 AM and I had just reached Willard Avenue, a block from my office across the district line in Chevy Chase, Maryland when the news of the first plane came across the radio. By the time I got to my building, the second plane had hit and I knew what this was about. I pulled out my cell phone and tried to phone my son, who we had dropped off at NYU, in Greenwich Village a week earlier.

My son arrived near Washington Square just after the second plane hit the tower and he walked into his class and informed his teacher, who said, "That's very interesting, now let's get on with today's topic." By the time the class ended, both towers were down, and by that time there was no way of reaching my son by cell phone.

I figured he would go to a near by hospital to donate blood. And that is exactly what he did, but we had no way of knowing he was okay until 7 PM, when we got a phone call from some fellow citizen in New Jersey who had taken names and phone numbers along the line of people waiting to donate at the hospital and called to say he had seen our son and he was fine. He spent all day being shuttled from hospital to hospital, trying to donate blood, but all were overwhelmed with people trying to do that, and, as it turned out, there were very few survivors who needed the blood.

My wife, whose office was four blocks from the White House was on the road for 4 1/2 hours getting home. 'That's a twenty minute trip on a weekend. Her cell phone was working. She was frustrated.

My younger son was at his school in the District, a few blocks from my office and he got a ride home.

My predominant emotion that day was anger.

As much as I disliked President Bush, I shared his sense of outrage and his desire to just go in and do something, and let those people in the Gaza strip who were celebrating and handing out candy in the streets get a taste of our anger.

Later, when the guns got aimed at Iraq, I realized you can't just start swinging wildly. When your opponent is cool, smart and thoughtful, you have to think before you start pulling the trigger.

Now, 10 years later, with troops trying to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, or whatever they are doing there, it looks like Viet Nam all over again. And I realize there is some truth in that old adage: When you go to seek revenge, first dig two graves.