Shocker: David Brooks finds fault with contemporary culture

David Brooks’ columns get worse and worse.  Yesterday he used is space on the Times Op-Ed page to fault the lack of discussion about good character in contemporary culture.  Perhaps one could write an insightful piece on the subject but Brooks certainly doesn’t.  Consider his first sentence: “One reason many politicians behave badly these days is that we spend less time thinking about what it means to behave well.”

Do many politicians behave badly these days? Certainly scandals such as the Anthony Weiner Twitter episode grab headlines but are they really so common? Consider that perhaps one or two national politicians a year out of the 435 members of the House, 100 senators, and many executive branch officials are involved in these scandals.   The numbers are hardly overwhelming.  Surely other politicians who behave badly are not caught.   But that has always been the case.  Politicians have affairs, cheat, and lie.  Do we really have any suggestion that this has increased? 

What has increased is the scrutiny politicians are under.  They are more recognizable, less sheltered by social conventions, and much easier to leave a trail in our digital age.  This is a huge cultural shift and so too has the way these events are reported changed.  But Brooks simply treats the issue as one of cultural decline.  Complaining about the type of conversation we are having about the Weiner case would make sense. 

Yet Brooks argues that “these days...we spend less time thinking about what it means to behave well.”  He seems to miss entirely that that is the conversation we are having.  Part of what drives the public interest in such scandals is certainly crass voyeurism and the pleasure of seeing a public figure brought down, but issues of character and morality are also being discussed: What does it mean to cheat in a digital age? What type of behavior is acceptable for a married man?  For a married politician? What is the relationship between a politician’s public and private behavior?  Can the two even be separated in the online age? 

After the first sentence Brooks offers paragraphs of praise to the politicians in Trollope’s novels, who “are reserved, prudent and scrupulous. They immerse themselves in dull practical questions like, say, converting the currency system.”  He argues that “readers would have come away from his books with a certain model for how practical people should behave, which they could either copy or argue with.” Brooks does not really want to argue with these models; he thinks they should be copied. This is fine and well.  In fact I agree with Brooks here.  My ideal politician would probably share many of these Trollopian virtues.  However, by framing his column with a the-past-was-better argument, Brooks sets himself above the debate that is actually going on right now.