{"id":2980,"date":"2009-05-19T09:25:45","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T14:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=2980"},"modified":"2009-05-19T08:53:26","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T13:53:26","slug":"david-brookss-special-place-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=2980","title":{"rendered":"David Brooks&#8217;s Special Place in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written before about <a href=\"http:\/\/2parse.com\/\/?p=2690\">David Brooks&#8217;s special place in Washington<\/a> &#8211; as the almost always\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>reliable barometer of the opinions and beliefs of the Washington establishment (and I don\u2019t mean that as an insult.) The figure he cuts is a rather odd combination of an amateur (but insightful) anthropologist and a insider protecting the system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is an honesty about him, and his writing &#8211; an earnestness.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/15\/opinion\/15brooks.html\">This observation from last Friday&#8217;s column<\/a> struck me as probably true &#8211; and worrying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you read the C.B.O. testimony and talk to enough experts, you come away with a stark conclusion: There are deep structural forces, both in Medicare and the private insurance market, that have driven the explosion in health costs. It is nearly impossible to put together a majority coalition for a bill that challenges those essential structures. Therefore, the leading proposals on Capitol Hill do not directly address the structural problems. They are a collection of worthy but speculative ideas designed to possibly mitigate their effects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In his way, I think David Brooks represents the best of what a columnist can offer &#8211; honest, informed opinions of intelligent people trying to make sense of the world around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written before about David Brooks&#8217;s special place in Washington &#8211; as the almost always\u00a0 reliable barometer of the opinions and beliefs of the Washington establishment (and I don\u2019t mean that as an insult.) The figure he cuts is a rather odd combination of an amateur (but insightful) anthropologist and a insider protecting the system. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[544,4,458],"tags":[433],"class_list":["post-2980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","tag-david-brooks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-M4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2982,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2980\/revisions\/2982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}