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Salon: David Brooks Thinks He Sees a 'New Establishment' to Run Economic Policy (9/23/08) by Glenn Greenwald
Online critic Greenwald provides a reality check for Brooks' New York Times assertion that, with the proposed massive Wall Street bailout, the U.S. is "entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable—and often oligarchic—framework for capitalist endeavor":
One of the most enduring and intense pundit fetishes is the fantasy that there is a small, elite group of trans-partisan, centrist, responsible Establishment Wise Men—the Ultimate Safe and Loving Daddy Figures—who can ride into any political crisis and rescue the warring partisan masses with their Sober and Powerful Integrity. We just need to call upon them for help, cede them absolute power, trust in them, step aside, and watch the Magic that is Created as a result of what Brooks longingly describes as "the wisdom and public spiritedness of those in charge." Stripped of his neutral observer rhetoric, that's all Brooks is "predicting"—more accurately, yearning for—here.
Greenwald really would "love to know who has been running economic policy up until now if it wasn't these Wise Men from Wall Street?" (Ad-viewing required.)
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