Edited and posted by Kate Slusser, COM 303
David Brooks, conservative New York Times columnist, said in an on-campus lecture Thursday night that, although he is a Sen. John McCain fan, Sen. Barack Obama is sure to win the election this year.
Brooks, 46, spoke on politics as part of the Gloria Shatto Lecture Series in the Mount Berry Chapel from 7:30 to 8:15 p.m. Following the speech, he spent 25 minutes answering questions from the audience, which consisted of a wide age group: students, faculty, alumni and community members.
David Brooks
Photo courtesy of thinkprogress.org
Besides his columnist position, Brooks has been a senior editor at the Weekly Standard , a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly , and an Opinion-Editorials editor for the Wall Street Journal. He is currently a commentator on “The News Hour with Jim Lehner” and a recurrent analyst on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Brooks gave his audience an insider’s perspective on politicians, including some challenges they face and the strengths and weaknesses of all three major presidential candidates.
• John McCain- Brooks said he thinks McCain has an incredibly high energy level, like a fighter pilot. He knows a lot about foreign policy but very little about domestic policy. McCain is a social butterfly who can’t sit still and whose office is in the middle of the suite so everyone must walk through it. He has a great moral sense, but he resists organization. Brooks said he believes McCain is a Republican that a lot of Democrats can get behind.
• Hillary Clinton - She is very intelligent and disciplined, Brooks said. Clinton was a very good senator, and she works incredibly hard. She does not trust; however, and she thinks of running for office as war. She hasn’t run a particularly good campaign and has an awfully low chance of winning the election, according to Brooks.
• Barack Obama- Brooks said Obama is very perceptive and eloquent. He places a tremendous emphasis on unity, and he has an extraordinarily supple mind. His weaknesses are his lack of confidence and his lack of involvement in House actions. Although he wants to bring people together, this could prove hard for him because he is not in the center on issues. Also, he is so good at seeing both sides of an issue that, Brooks said, this could lead to trouble in making decisions.
Brooks said that it would be foolish to vote against the Democrats this year. He explained that, when polled, 80 percent of Americans said they are currently dissatisfied with where this country is going. Since Republicans are presently in control and have been for eight years, Brooks said, citizens will want a new party in charge. He said it is probable that Obama will win the election.
Even though Brooks said Obama is the likeliest winner, Brooks said he favors McCain. Contrary to the reputation of most politicians, Brooks said that McCain, his closest friend out of the candidates, is a good man.
“He is perfectly honest with me, unfailingly and sometimes self-destructively honest,” Brooks said.
After Brooks’ speech, many audience members said that they enjoyed the lecture and had different positive feedback.
“I thought he was really impressive,” Dan Lipscomb, a 1969 Berry grad, said. “He was really funny- especially when he said being a conservative at the New York Times is like being a chief rabbi in Mecca.”
Both faculty and students had good things to say about Brooks’ lecture.
“I think it was very informative and comical,” sophomore history major Scott Alan Hill said. “I really liked the insight into the private life of politicians- how they communicate or don’t communicate with each other was interesting.”
Berry College President Dr. Stephen R. Briggs also attended and said he was impressed with Brooks.
“I thought he was exactly the kind of speaker we needed,” Briggs said. “He was funny, smart, thoughtful, balanced. He helped us think. It really restores your faith in journalism.”
Brooks kept his audience laughing with frequent jokes. He commented that senators have big heads.
“What senators have are not heads, they are containers for heads,” Brooks said. Brooks also said that although politicians are people’s people, they have very few true friends.
“They are so used to climbing that they don’t develop relationships side by side,” he said. “They feel this incredible loneliness and sometimes they lurch out in the cruelest ways for human contact.”
Brooks commented that politicians, besides being lonelier than expected, are also usually a lot different in person than on television, especially President George Bush.
“Well, the biggest difference is that he’s about 80 IQ points smarter in person,” Brooks said. “It’s funny, when you’ll talk about Russian history with him in person, he’ll talk about books he’s read or about Peter the Great. Stuff he would never talk about in public. His manner is also very different. He’s much more Texas in person. He slouches, he sort of snorts, he sits crooked, he has an imaginary chaw on the side of his mouth, he’s actually quite profane.”
Brooks not only offered a journalist’s insight on politicians, but he also offered advice to students hoping to break into the journalism business.
“The first thing I would say is learn at lot about the world, not just about journalism. So I was a history major, philosophy, English, economics,” Brooks said. “The second thing is you’ve got to bring something to the table, some body of knowledge. For somebody who wanted to go into print journalism, be aware that you have to think of how it’s going to change. Television journalism seems like it’s going to survive. I’d say it’s doing quite well.”
Brooks, a former traveling professor of public policy, said that he enjoys speaking to college students and that Berry treated him well.
The Gloria Shatto Lecture Series honors Dr. Gloria M. Shatto, the president of Berry College from 1980 to 1998 and the first woman to be president of a college or university in Georgia. She helped create the WinShape program and increased Berry’s recognition as one of the best comprehensive colleges in the southeast. Shatto believed that learning can take place not only in the classroom or in textbooks but also in the world, and her lecture series was created to give Berry students the opportunity to learn from worldly speakers.
No comments:
Post a Comment