Public Opinion Merits "the Profoundest Respect"

In his New York Times column today,
David Brooks (as he so often does) recites emerging conventional
Washington wisdom, demanding that Democrats abandon health care reform
if the Republicans today win the Massachusetts Senate seat:

In his New York Times column today,
David Brooks (as he so often does) recites emerging conventional
Washington wisdom, demanding that Democrats abandon health care reform
if the Republicans today win the Massachusetts Senate seat:

Many
Democrats, as always, are caught in their insular liberal information
loop. They think the polls are bad simply because the economy is bad.
They tell each other health care is unpopular because the people aren't
sophisticated enough to understand it. Some believe they can still pass
health care even if their candidate, Martha Coakley, loses the Senate
race in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

That, of course, would be
political suicide. It would be the act of a party so arrogant, elitist
and contemptuous of popular wisdom that it would not deserve to govern.
Marie Antoinette would applaud, but voters would rage.

The American people are not always right, but their basic sense of equilibrium is worthy of the profoundest respect.

Here
we have one of the most common and manipulative tools of the political
class: pretending to care about public opinion only when it's
consistent with one's own views (it's "worthy of the profoundest
respect"), and disregarding it as the irrelevant bile of the ignorant
rabble when it's not.

I remember another policy that
was even more unpopular with the "Ameican people" than Obama's health
care plan. It was called the Iraq War. Throughout 2006 and 2007, overwhelming majorities of Americans
were not only opposed to the war, but favored a quick timetable for
withdrawal. So intense was the opposition that the Republicans
suffered one of the century's most thorough and humiliating midterm
election defeats in 2006. Yet there was David Brooks writing column
after column demanding that public opinion be ignored, mocking withdrawal as deeply Unserious, advocating continued occupation, insisting that the superior wisdom of a select elite govern our policy rather than ignorant mass sentiment.
Brooks and his neoconservative friends wanted to keep sending other
Americans (but never themselves) off to that war to die even though
only a small minority of citizens supported it. Marie Antoinette
indeed. Opposition to Bush's surge was particularly intense -- close to 70% -- yet Brooks was heaping praise on John McCain for ignoring public opinion
and supporting Bush's plan ("when the Iraq war was at its worst, and
other candidates were hiding in the grass waiting to see how things
would turn out, McCain championed the surge . . . . He did it knowing
that it would cost him his media-darling status and probably the
presidency. But for years he had hated the way the war was being
fought. And when the opportunity to change it came, the only honorable course was to try").

If
the Washington Establishment is adept at anything, it is ignoring and
marginalizing public opinion. That bothers very few of its members,
least of all David Brooks. Here was Brooks,
in the midst of the deeply unpopular Wall Street bailout, celebrating
the return of rule by "a cohesive financial establishment" that "does
not rely on any system of checks and balances, but on the wisdom and
public spiritedness of those in charge" and which "will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks": "We're
entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts
to create a stable -- and often oligarchic -- framework for capitalist
endeavor." The man who yearns for oligarchical rule by good-natured
"heads from the investment banks" today parades around as the defender
of public opinion. And most ironically, when the reform plan
ostensibly included one of the most popular aspects of health care reform -- the public option -- it was deemed too "liberal" and fringe by the likes of David Brooks,
and it was therefore jettisoned. How come during the public option
debate we weren't hearing from Brooks about how the sentiments of
Americans are "worthy of the profoundest respect"?

As he typically does,
Brooks is just inventing facts about public opinion. There's no
evidence that views about health care reform have driven the
Massachusetts race, and Brooks offers none. That's a common trick he
and his pundit-comrades use: they simply assert that public opinion is
consistent with their own views without citing any evidence. But the
larger deceit is the pretense that American public opinion matters.
There may be good arguments about why this health care reform bill
should be abandoned, but when it comes to the desire of people like
David Brooks to block efforts to expand health care coverage, public
opinion is -- as always -- the absolute last thing that matters. The
opinion of the masses is just a prop they cynically wave around
whenever it can prettify their desires with democratic packaging.

UPDATE: One
other point worth noting: according to Brooks, Democrats would be
acting like Marie Antoinette if they try to provide health insurance to
millions of impoverished Americans. People like Brooks, however, are
the opposite by Marie Antoinette by telling the poor that they can't
have health insurance because we had to bailout Wall Street instead.
I think he has the concept of Marie Antoinette rather backwards.

Join Us: News for people demanding a better world


Common Dreams is powered by optimists who believe in the power of informed and engaged citizens to ignite and enact change to make the world a better place.

We're hundreds of thousands strong, but every single supporter makes the difference.

Your contribution supports this bold media model—free, independent, and dedicated to reporting the facts every day. Stand with us in the fight for economic equality, social justice, human rights, and a more sustainable future. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover the issues the corporate media never will. Join with us today!

© 2023 Salon