David Brooks is back in his more stable role as foil for Gail Collins's splendid humor, and loses even that role in his concluding foolishness, but they (or some clever Times writer of headlines) have chosen such a good title for today's conversation (see footnote below),* and since I still see Gail Collins as successor to Molly Ivins, I can't resist offering their exchange:
THE CONVERSATION September 19, 2012, 1:20 PM
The 47 Percent Solution
By David Brooks and Gail Collins
In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.
Tags:
BARACK OBAMA,FUNDRAISING DINNER COMMENTS, MITT ROMNEY,THE 47%
David Brooks: Gail, greetings from Dulles International Airport. I’m in a little clutch of travelers huddling around the electrical chargers like Napoleon’s soldiers around the fire on the retreat from Moscow.
Gail Collins: David, airports are meant to make people crazy. I can understand why they might not be able to make the flights leave on time, but if they weren’t plotting to torture us, they would at least put more outlets in the walls.
David: Meanwhile there’s some jerk barking business orders into his cellphone at about 85 decibels, drowning out the 747s outside. Can I make the point that just because it is legal to use your phone in crowded places does not mean that it is moral?
Gail: Oh Lord, I do sympathize. We need a phone app that would allow everybody in the vicinity of one of those yellers to vote on whether or not they think their conversation sounds interesting. The results would be displayed on the loud person’s cell in bright red letters.
David: Speaking of things that got under my skin, there were Mitt Romney’s fund-raiser comments, as you may have heard. My official reaction was in my column this week, but underneath I couldn’t help thinking about the visits I’ve made to community colleges around the country. These schools are attended by people whose families are often on food stamps and public assistance. When they get out, many of them won’t be making enough money to pay income tax. Yet if you look at how they live — long bus rides, endless studying, full or part-time jobs on the side, complicated family issues — do we really want to call them society’s freeloaders? It’s just offensive and detached from reality.
Gail: Is this going to go down as the week the Romney campaign officially lost you? On Monday, it sounded as if they were listening to your brave – albeit hopeless — calls for them to be specific about their policy positions. They were going to give details! They didn’t, but there was at least one brief shining moment when they seemed to feel guilty. And then of course the loser-moocher 47 percent video surfaced.
David: Putting the substance aside, what do you make of the politics of it? Frankly, I’m not sure how much it hurts. Did Obama’s “clinging” comments have a big effect four years ago or his “you didn’t build that” remark? Voters are so cynical about politicians, nothing surprises them. What do you think?
Gail: You never can tell what’s really going to resonate. A wise man told me recently that Paul Ryan’s policy fibs at the convention didn’t matter but the one about running a sub-three-hour marathon was devastating. It probably depends on whether seniors on Social Security realize he was talking about them.
David: I guess what’s been most depressing for me is the long string of mistakes the Romney campaign has made. They didn’t define their candidate over the summer, while Obama pounded away. They pick Ryan and then don’t make the case for the Ryan proposals. They waste the convention by offering nothing. Then when they say they are going to get more specific, they mostly end up just going small. As a growth agenda, they suggest they are going to crack down on Chinese trade. That’s triviality on stilts.
Gail: David, it does make me sad to hear you so disheartened. Although not in a way that would make me wish Romney was doing any better.
David: I didn’t expect romance from the Romney campaign, but I did expect some sort of smooth professionalism.
Gail: I did like it when they said they were going to respond to voters’ desire for more details with an exciting new ad campaign, and then unveiled a 30-second TV spot that said: Mitt Romney is in favor of education and small business!
David: Having done all this kvetching, I still think Romney has a decent shot at winning. The country is heading in the wrong direction. The Democrats are much more liberal than the median voter, especially on role-of-government issues. Obama is intellectually exhausted and the country wants a change.
Gail: I am way too paranoid to argue that Obama’s pulling ahead, although deep down I do sort of feel that way.
And when you’re talking about people who are intellectually exhausted, I give you the Republican presidential herd. McCain? Romney? I know you think Paul Ryan is a great idea guy, but the campaign has come to realize that once the public gets a good look at his great ideas, they run the other way.
David: No matter how much Romney screws up, I get the sense that the country is asking permission to switch leaders. Romney is making it hard, but they just keep asking. I see, for example, that the Gallup daily tracking poll has Obama up by 1 percentage point. The convention bounce is gone. The fundamental gravitational forces of the election still apply.
Gail: I don’t agree, David. Any Republican campaign that leaves you this depressed is in big trouble.
David: Of course as I sit here, surrounded by loud-talkers who are in danger of having a laptop shoved down their throats, I don’t know what the public reaction to freeloadergate will be. Memo to conservatives: Don’t hate America. Don’t hate even 47 percent of America. It’s unattractive and it’s always wrong.
* From Wikipedia: "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is a 1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976. Published as a "lost manuscript" of the late Dr. John H. Watson, the book recounts Holmes' recovery from cocaine addiction (with the help of Sigmund Freud) and his subsequent prevention of a European war through the unravelling of a sinister kidnapping plot."