Fast Eddie

David Brooks needs to carefully shut down his laptop and make sure the spittle has fully dried before turning it back on. I wouldn't want it to short out...the Times can't afford that kind of unanticipated IT expense.

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

Wow. You've said a mouthful, there, Davey.

Nevermind that your boy McCain "opted in" to public financing in order to secure a loan his bankrupt primary campaign desperately needed, then tried to "opt out" before being told by the Republican running the FEC that that wasn't a decision McCain could make on his own.

But that's wonky shit.

If those paragraphs above weren't so amateurishly and clunkishly written, I would salute you, sir, in your ability to blend so many disparate attacks on Obama. I eagerly await Doghouse Riley's smackdown of your contemptuous, fear-soaked, sniveling little screed, but in the meantime, let's identify what your saying here. Obama's a

• a Niebuhr spewing elitist
• a "speechifier" dog whistle tying him to a history of prominent black preachers
• some sort of South Side Chicago pool hustler

The "Scarlett Johannsen set" is particularly notable. I have no idea what the "SJ Set" is (Woody Allen?), but Brooks un-deftly strokes Republican attitudes towards Hollywood and their fears of black men taking our whitest women. A two-fer.

So much for our post-racial society, and so much for any assumptions that Obama will be protected from racist attacks. If Brooks can write this shit on the pages of the NY Times and still be invited to pontificate on NPR, then, we can expect to see a lot more of it in less high-minded locations.

All that said, I would really like someone to stop pouting that Obama has "broken his promise," and instead ask him where he stands on the FISA "compromise" that's a sweetheart deal for a president firmly poised to not crack 30% popularity before he shamefacedly leaves office.

UPDATE: More here and, 'specially, here.