With all of the deserved attention being given to David Brooks's idiotic Reagan revisionism, it might be easy to miss his piece today on John McCain.
About six months ago, I was having lunch with a political consultant and we were having a smart-alecky conversation about the presidential race. All of sudden, my friend interrupted the flow of gossip and said: "You know, there’s really only one great man running for president this year, and that’s McCain."
The comment cut through the way we pundits normally talk about presidential candidates. We tend to view them like products and base our verdicts on their market share at the moment. We don’t so much evaluate their character;
When I heard Scarborough this morning touting it, saying that Brooks had "hit it on the head," I was immediately suspcious.
Brooks has a tell, like a bad bluffer in a poker game. Here is the give-away:
There have been occasions when McCain compromised his principles for political gain, but he was so bad at it that it always backfired.
Here is the translation in non-Brooksian English: John McCain is principled, except when he's not, and he should be forgiven for all of those times when he is unprincipled because he is really bad at being unprincipled.
Nice!