Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Today: The dirty little secret is that serious legal arguments are those that lawyers pretend to take seriously. If enough Republican hacks decide to pretend that Judge Reed O'Connor is serious, he becomes serious. My forecast? The Fifth Circuit narrowly upholds O'Connor, and then it goes down 8-1 in the Supreme Court—unless one of the Democratic justices dies or retires before the decision is announced, it which case O'Connor is upheld 5-3.

Jack Balkin wants to maintain two positions at once:

1. "The lesson of Sebelius is that if you give enough very smart lawyers enough time to work on a legal problem, they can come up with creditable arguments for many (but not all) legal positions, even if, when the task started, the position seemed hopeless..."

2. "I am most certainly not saying that legal argument and legal craft are mere disguises for political ideology or that they have no independent significance. I have been trained as a lawyer and I express opinions about the quality of legal arguments all the time. It is my job to do so. Thus, whether lawyers are willing to support a given claim depends on their perception of the quality of the legal reasoning and the quality of the legal arguments that can be advanced for it..."

But the second means almost nothing if "creditable" arguments can be constructed for nearly everything, and the task of law professors is then to retrospectively justify whatever the judges pick. The first means little if the legal community does have strong standards for what is a strong argument. How to resolve this? By noting that whatever gets five votes on the Supreme Court is retrospectively turned into the strongest arguments. And Supreme Court justices are very good at convincing themselves that what upholds their ideology and partisan position is in fact the best-argued and best-crafted.

Jack Balkin: Texas v. U.S: Off the Wall and On the Wall in the Age of Trump: "The judge's arguments are not even close to being persuasive given existing legal precedents. Does that mean that the position is 'off-the-wall'?... Asking whether a legal claim is 'off-the-wall' is a question of whether it is a reasonable claim, or at least one on which reasonable minds can differ.... But the perceived quality of legal reasoning and legal arguments are not exogenous from social influence...

Hoisted from the Archives: Can't Anybody in Obama's Inner Circle Play This Game?: When people in the White House ask me whether I think Obama's SOTU address should be about tax reform or Social Security reform (i.e., 2/3 Social Security benefit cuts, 1/3 tax increases offered by the administration--and God alone knows what happens after that), I want to say: Why not make the SOTU address about jobs and economic recovery?...

Crisis, Rinse, Repeat: Key economic data from the periods following the 1929 stock-market crash and the 2007-2008 financial crisis suggest that the current recovery has been unnecessarily anemic. If policymakers refuse to heed the lessons of the New Deal era, then the next crisis is destined to be as prolonged as the last.

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: The twelve not completely crazy Republican senators who might be open to some form of not-insane health care legislation over the next fifteen months:

• Susan Collins R-ME
• Lisa Murkowski R-AK
• John McCain R-AZ
• Dean Heller R-NV
• Lamar Alexander R-TN
• Shelley Moore Capito R-WV
• Rob Portman R-OH
• Bob Corker R-TN
• Tom Cotton R-AK
• Lindsey Graham R-SC
• Mike Lee R-UT
• Jerry Moran R-KS

The puzzle about just how and why the brain eater ate Clive Crook's brain—how it was that, starting about a decade ago, one of the most interesting (and intelligent) of the Tories simply lost his grip on reality—remains, to me at least, a mystery.

Here I am hoisting from one of the first full-blown signs of it in 2007.

A little background: By 2008 the brain-eating was overwhelming. For example we had Clive Crook on the "huge success" of the nomination of Sarah Palin—meaning, that is, that she was highly qualified to be Vice President and would attract lots of new votes to the McCain-Palin ticket:

Clive Crook (2008): Democrats must learn some respect: "The problem in my view is less Mr Obama and more the attitudes of the claque of official and unofficial supporters that surrounds him... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/09/democrats-must-learn-some-respect/8803/

From June 3, 2007I Like Barack Obama's Health Care Plan http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/06/i_like_barack_o.html: FT.com / Comment & analysis: It is an iron law of American politics that Democratic party politicians who propose relatively detailed healthcare reform plans–as Barack Obama did last Tuesday–get trashed.

Weekend Reading: Nate Silver (2009): Dow 36,000 Guy Kevin Hassett Accuses Obama of Sabotaging Economy https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dow-36000-guy-accuses-obama-of/: "Nope, not an Onion headline. Kevin Hassett, co-author of Dow 36,000...

...which proffered exactly the sort of advice that you might reasonably infer from its title — has now penned a column accusing Barack Obama of deliberately attempting to sabotage the economy....

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?

Let us start with two texts this morning:

Paul Krugman: Don't Blame Macroeconomics (Wonkish And Petty): "Robert Skidelsky... argues, quite correctly in my view, that economists have become far too inward-looking...

...But his prime examples of economics malfeasance are, well, terrible.... [The] more or less standard model of macroeconomics when interest rates are near zero [is] IS-LM in some form.... [And] policy had exactly the effects it was “supposed to.” Now, policymakers chose not to believe this.... And yes, some economists gave them cover. But that’s a very different story from the claim that economics failed to offer useful guidance...

Simon Wren-Lewis: Misrepresenting Academic Economists: "The majority of academic macroeconomists were always against austerity...

Must-Watch: Stephen Shortell, Jesse Choper, Brad DeLong, Ann O'Leary, Ann Marie Marciarille, and John Ellwood (2012): Reactions to the Supreme Court's Ruling on the Affordable Care Act:

I find that I have much more to say (or, rather, largely, republish) relevant to the current debate between Simon Wren-Lewis and Unlearning Economics.

Let me start by saying that I think Unlearning Economics is almost entirely wrong in his proposed solutions.

Indeed, he does not seem especially knowledgeable about his cases. For example:

Weekend Reading: Josh Barro: Healthcare: Republicans Lied. They Deserve Punishment: "It's hard to decide which would be the more politically damaging outcome for Republican politicians...

...passing the American Health Care Act, and therefore owning the premium increases and coverage losses it would cause; or not passing the bill, and therefore failing to... "repeal... Obamacare." Each option is a political nightmare... an admission that Republicans cannot deliver what they have promised....

Weekend Reading: Tom Levenson: Why I Hate The NY Times, Part n: "This paragraph [by Margot Sanger-Katz]...

...There is most likely a middle way. Republican lawmakers might be comfortable with a system that shifts more of the costs of care onto people who are sick, if it makes the average insurance plan less costly for the healthy. But making those choices would mean engaging in very real trade-offs, less simple than their talking point.

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: AP: No House vote on GOP health care bill today: "Canceling Thursday’s vote would amount to a significant political setback for Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan...

Must-Read: Bob Christie: 380,000 Arizonans May Lose Medicaid: "The report looks at the patients who gained coverage under a Medicaid expansion pushed through in 2013 by former Gov. Jan Brewer...

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Erik Loomis: Dumbasses of America: "The genre of 'let’s talk to idiotic white voters who support Trump even though he will decimate their lives' is already more stale than bread baked on November 8...

...However, it does lead to the occasional special anecdote that truly sums up the stupidity of many white people:

The IMF's Finance and Development has paired me on "secular stagnation" with John Taylor.

When they told me that I would be paired with John Taylor, I protested: As I see it, sometime in the early 2000s John Taylor ceased being an economist and became a politician. Hence, I thought, he was likely to have very little of value to say to professional economists--to those of us who are trying to use the tools of economics to understand the world.

And I see that I was right: I do not think Taylor's piece has any value at all to professional economists.

Let me take especial note of five passages in Taylor's piece: passages that, in my view, a professional economist simply could not write:

Should-Read: Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Health-Care Nightmare Is Only Just Beginning: "Republican members of Congress do not agree with each other on the parameters of a replacement...

Must-Read: The right moment for Republicans interested in health policy to intervene in the politics was back in 2010, when the "repeal and replace" meme was first decided on. They should have said: "Hell, no!--You really do not want to say that."

My suspicion is that they thought the battle was not worth fighting because the dog would never catch the car. The least they could do is apologize to the rest of us now...

David Anderson: Governing Is Hard: "The Republican Party has an ACA problem.  The ACA is deficit reducing...

Will competition in health insurance survive?

The answer now is “perhaps”.

The federal courts, at their lowest district court level, have just weighed in on the side of more competition and fewer behemoth health insurance companies; on the side of more competition and fewer monopolies and near monopolies. This matters for consumers: monopolies are bad news, and monopolies where what is being sold is a very expensive necessity—which health insurance coverage is—very bad news for consumers, and so for societal well-being. If we are to retain a market-based health insurance system, people need effective options. A market in which there is only one insurance company, or two companies that collude to match each other’s prices, has all the bureaucratic drawbacks of a single-payer system plus all the drawbacks of a monopoly.

Must-Read: Looking forward at the Trump administration, it now seems very clear that under the Trump administration policy will be:

• random
• unmotivated by technocratic effectiveness
• very interested in cutting taxes for the rich
• very interested in entrenching the economic position of the rich who have Trump's ear
• likely to produce a number of disasters--think Bush 43, only more so.

Therefore, it seems important that as much as possible should be done to encourage:

• the neutralization of Trumpism at the state level.
• the promising of future reimbursement of states that undertake said neutralization.
• the highlighting--as a yardstick against which to measure policy--of what the plans were had the woman who won the majority of votes become president.

Nicholas Bagley has the ObamaCare front on this:

Nicholas Bagley: Patching Obamacare at the State Level: "If Congress zeroes out the individual mandate—and my hunch is that it will—it’s game over for the exchanges...

Comment of the Day: James: Nancy Letourneau: Republican Confusion Over Obamacare Repeal: "Hoisted from 2012 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2012/10/john-podhoretz-badly-needs-some-better-friends-than-fred-barnes.html...

...But there is something serious to be written here about Orwell, "1984", and the ability of the Inner Party to keep its understanding of the world separate from the propaganda they feed to the Outer Party and to the proles.

I always assumed they knew this and were just trying to figure out who to blame when they didn't pass a plan.

Not running the table in January 2009 to make a V-shaped recovery all but inevitable, but instead trusting to good luck and the accuracy of the forecast. An obvious mistake then. An obvious mistake now. And I have never heard a good account of why it was made--other than that Obama, Emmanuel, Plouffe, and Axelrod bonded with Geithner, and that Geithner is always "let's do less", no matter how strong the arguments to do more are:

• Paul Krugman (2010-07-09): _What Went Wrong?
• Paul Krugman (2013-01-06): The Big Fail

Note to Self: Regulatory Uncertainty and Housing Finance: The U.S. Treasury seized Fannie and Freddie in 2008, and said that housing finance would be differently organized in the future.

Any Hopes for Inclusive Growth in the Age of Trump?:

Technocracy, Imperial Court Politics, Federalism, and Partisan Equilibrium

J. Bradford DeLong :: U.C. Berkeley, NBER, and WCEG :: November 17, 2016 :: PIIE

http://tinyurl.com/dl20161117a

Inclusive growth?

We are highly unlikely to have any—not for the next two years, and probably not for the next four years. Thus the talk I had prepared and the powerpoint I had drawn up two weeks ago are now totally irrelevant.

Must-Read: The divide between Democrats and Republicans in the United States in 2016 is best conceptualized as a divide between those who think that an America in which black, brown, yellow, red, etc. people vote is great and in which they have a great deal to gain and those who think that an America in which black, brown, yellow, red, etc. people vote is no longer great and in which they have something--maybe not a great deal, but something--to lose:

Francis Wilkinson: [Race, Not Class, Dictates Republican Future][]: "The class compositions of the Republican and Democratic parties keep evolving...

Must-Read: This by Josh Barro was, I think, the best take on what the 2016 presidential election was really about: telling it like it is. I do, however, have several caveats:

• Josh Barro's analysis is correct only for high-information Trump voters. For low-information Trump voters, the calculus is: "Gee, there's more of an uproar in the media about this election! Maybe it's because of social changes produced by the internet? Whatever, I'm a Republican, and the Republican convention nominated Trump, and the Republican establishment says to vote for Trump. So I will vote for Trump." Things aren't as dire about all--or most--of those of our fellow citizens who pull the lever for Trump as Barro believes. There is a weak duty not to be a low-information voter, but not a strong duty not to be one.

• A great many high-information voters who usually vote Republican are not voting for Trump. That is, I think, a good sign.

• Where the news is much worse than Barro says is with respect to the Republican establishment that has fallen in line behind Trump. That is a very worrisome problem for the future, whatever the next four years bring us.

Josh Barro: Final Thoughts on 2016: "The core question of the 2016 election is stupidly simple...

Three excellent pieces on how the media has failed us--and failed us worse this election cycle than ever before: Brian Buetler, Todd Gitlin, Jurek Martin.

By the way, I disagree with Buetler in one important dimension. When Brian says "there is no shortage of journalists and outlets in this industry with a lot to be proud of...", he is lying. There is a great shortage. That is why Brian needs to come up with a list--a shortlist--of journalists and outlets to whitelist:

Brian Buetler: [Shame on Us, the American Media][]: "There is no shortage of journalists and outlets in this industry with a lot to be proud of...

In 2000 Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas decided the presidential election by casting their five votes in a lawless exercise that they then forbade ever being used as a precedent. In this election Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Joseph Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas are once again casting votes--enough, it looks like right now, to give North Carolina to Donald Trump:

Michael DeLong: The Attack on Voting Rights:

In 2013, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court struck down a couple of key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Section 5 of the Act required certain state and local governments to get federal approval before they could implement any changes to their voting laws, and Section 4(b) contained the formula that determined which areas had to get approval. The formula was based on the areas’ past records of discrimination in voting.

Why does this come as a surprise to Bret Stephens? The distance between Sarah Palin and Rick Perry on the one hand and Donald Trump on the other is not that large: (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)

Bret Stephens: 2016’s Big Reveal: "The awful election of 2016... was the Big Reveal... the guiding spirit of the modern conservative movement is neither Burke nor Lincoln...

Paul Ryan von Papen: GOP Not Donald Trump's Party: "It is no one person’s party... (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)

...Donald Trump won the primary fair and square. As a party leader, as the highest elected official in the party, I have always felt a duty to the process, to democracy, to the primary voter who must be respected. And he won this fair and square. But no one person controls this party. This is a bottom-up, organic grassroots party based on conservative principles...

Joss Whedon: Verdict:

Paul Ryan had a choice: he could have shaped his future political career as the sensible Republican Speaker who had moderated Democratic policy initiatives and made Washington work. Or he could have shaped his future career as another raving loony nutcase who strove to the last to try to make Donald Trump President, get caught between the millstones of the Teabaggers to his right and deserting moderate ex-Republicans and the demographics to his left, and be ground to dust.

Paul Ryan has chosen:

Paul Ryan: The Choice Facing America: "Hillary Clinton... has offered no new ideas...

Why the Republicans have made and dragged us into their Trump hell. In America today, party affiliation reflects character:

Matthew Yglesias: @mattyglesias: "This is absolutely correct. But the corollary is GOP elected officials' failure of character has been massive."

Michael B Dougherty: [@michaelbd][]: "It’s boring to say it. But the best explanation of how people are going to vote next week is their party affiliation, not their character."

Those with character are or soon will be ex-Republicans.

People like Ari Fleischer are why the Republicans are in their self-made Trump hell--and have dragged the rest of us in here with them:

Kyle Cheney: @kyledcheney: "Five weeks ago, Ari was featured in a Trump press release announcing the "Bush Alumni Coalition" for Trump."

Katie Glueck: _@katieglueck: ".@arifleischer, one of the most prominent Bush admin alums to back Trump, has now decided he can't vote for him..."

Kaili Joy Gray: @KailiJoy: "TLDR Ari Fleischer: I'm not voting for president because I'm a coward who doesn't want to save this country"

Let us dispel with the fiction that today's Republican Party, with a primary-voting base that can nominate a Trump, and an establishment of office holders, donors, and apparatchiks that can fall in line behind him, is not an existential threat to America:

Brendan Nyhan: @BrendanNyhan: "Trump's pivot wasn't to the center...

...but to a new divide in American politics that would fundamentally change the party system if Republicans adopt it. Reminder: Not a word of this is conservative. Trying to shift axis of conflict to cosmopolitanism vs. race-inflected version of nationalism:

Tom Levenson: Stamina! (And Tactical Thinking): "There’s quite a contrast. The Republican ticket lists only what the two principals are doing... (Live from Las Vegas and Omaha)

Josh Barro: [Democrats' treatment of Mitt Romney was justified][]: "Anti-Trump conservatives have had the clarity to see that Donald Trump would make a very bad president, and to break with their team, often at some personal cost. I admire this... (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)

Claire McCaskill: 'Majority' Of Senate Republicans Won't Vote Trump: "I believe, and I'm basing this on some of the things my colleagues have said to me... (Live from the Republicans Self-Made Trump Hell)

...I believe the majority of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate are not going to vote for Donald Trump.... They know that they can work with Hillary Clinton and get some things done.... I believe that a great number of them will not be voting for Donald Trump, and a great number of them will in fact vote for Hillary Clinton...

The divide between Democrats and Republicans in the United States in 2016 is best conceptualized as a divide between those who think that an America in which black, brown, yellow, red, etc. people vote is great, and a place in which they have a great deal to gain; and those who think that an America in which black, brown, yellow, red, etc. people vote is no longer great, and is a place in which they have something--maybe not a great deal if they do not have much, but something--to lose.

Let me start with the very sharp Francis Wilkinson's argument that the ressentiment driving the Republican Party today is not class-based--is not the result of the economic disappointments and difficulties suffered by the white working class over the past generation--but rather extends all the way up the income ladder:

Ed Gaillard: @EdwardGaillard:

Sounds good! Let's do it! https://t.co/G7IDPNAcqS

— Ed Gaillard (@EdwardGaillard) November 1, 2016

Matthew Yglesias: @mattyglesias: "I think one driver of different views on the "economic anxiety" meme is how much of this stuff you get on a daily basis:

...People who know that it is absurd to say that the policies proposed by JEB! will produce 4%/year growth.

People who know that it is absurd to say that enacting Paul Ryan's deregulation agenda will rapidly boost U.S. GDP per capita to more than $300K/year.

And then there are people like:

Josh Jordan: Nate Silver’s Flawed Model: "The New York Times number cruncher lets his partisanship show...

...“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.” — Homer Simpson.

In the days before the first debate in Denver, President Obama held more than a four-point lead in the Real Clear Politics average, and Romney had been left for dead by most of the media. Then the debate came, and overnight Romney seemingly rid himself of the weaknesses that had been tacked on to him by over $100 million dollars in negative advertising. Now here we are a few weeks later with a dead heat in nationwide polls.

Why and how the Republicans made their Donald Trump hell, in one sentence:

Michael Kranish (2012): The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential campaign to President Obama: "As Romney’s campaign plane landed... at around 6 p.m. on Election Day, he turned on his iPad and opened the Drudge Report....

I have long thought somebody should go through and annotate the 2012 Mitt Romney: Full Transcript of the 47% Secret Video. So I will now do it. XXXI pieces, from soup to nuts, below the fold:

I have long thought somebody should go through and annotate the 2012 Mitt Romney: Full Transcript of the 47% Secret Video. So I will now do it.

Part XXVI: Dignity and Media:

WTF?!

"The View is high risk because of the five women on it, only one is conservative. Four are sharp-tongued and not conservative, Whoopi Goldberg in particular..."

Talking to modern American women is "high risk"?

I have long thought somebody should go through and annotate the 2012 Mitt Romney: Full Transcript of the 47% Secret Video. So I will now do it.

Part XXIV: People Are Disappointed with Obama's Policies:

After having his only reaction to incipient Trumpism from the Fox News-addled be to call for the elimination of the civil service, Romney pivots to how he is going to reach the key middle of the electorate. It's worth unpacking the steps of Romney's argument here in logical sequence:

1. Obama is "a failure.... a bad guy... did bad things... corrupt."
2. But this key segment of the electorate--"the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side, they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago."
3. So "they like him... they don't want to be told that they were wrong" to have supported them.
4. But they are open to be asked "Are you disappointed in his policies that haven't worked?"
5. And they are open to being told that "they did the right thing" in voting for him, "but he just wasn't up to the task... in over his head."
6. We Republicans understand the truth about Obama, and that is what animates us.
7. But these key people "voted for him... don't agree with us... the things that animate us are not the things that animate them."

The problem that Mitt Romney then faced was that the natural question for that "5 to 6 or 7 percent" to ask him was: What policies has Obama gotten wrong? And Romney's replies were:

• The shock hitting the economy at the end of George W. Bush's term was much bigger than people thought it was back in 2008: "He told you he'd keep unemployment below 8 percent..."
• A totally fake statistic that confirms my view that Romney had very much the wrong economic policy briefers: "Fifty percent of kids coming out of school can't get a job. Fifty percent."
• Another fake statistic: "Fifty percent of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won't graduate from high school." Blame this one on Alina and Colin Powelll. It doesn't count those who graduate in five years rather than four. It doesn't count G.E.D.'s (which are, IMHO, at least 2/3 of the way from "high school dropout" to "high school graduate").

And what else was Romney going to say? That Obama had not gotten us into enough wars in the Middle East? That he had successfully implemented RomneyCare in the Blue States, and it seemed to be working?

I think the disconnect between Romney-think and Romney campaign-think inside the Romney-bubble--Obama "a failure.... a bad guy... did bad things... corrupt"--and the message Romney was trying to sell to the middle of the electorate--"you did the right thing" in voting for him, "but he just wasn't up to the task... in over his head"--accounted for a lot of the campaign and message dysfunction of fall 2012 on the Republican side.

I have long thought somebody should go through and annotate the 2012 Mitt Romney: Full Transcript of the 47% Secret Video. So I will now do it.

Part XXIII: Corruption in Washington:

Here we have a rant from an "audience member". I presume when he says "CFEC" he means "CFPB"--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This makes me think that white men should not be allowed to retire and waste six hours a day watching Fox News: "Solyndra... Eric Holder... the most corrupt attorney general that we had ever... Nancy Pelosi was supposed to give us an honest Congress and has given us just the opposite as speaker... clean house, immediately..."

And Romney's only response? It was to call for getting rid of the civil service. There was nothing about: "You know Fox News's business model is to terrify you to keep your eyeballs glued to the screen? So it can charge its advertisers who sell you overpriced gold funds?"

And Romney's cowardly failure to push back against incipient Trumpism is, in my mind, something of which he should be greatly ashamed today:

Must-Read: In my view, the conservative intellectual crisis is the fact that David Brooks can write--and the New York Times publish--this piece on the conservative intellectual crisis. The only mention of race comes at the end, where Brooks writes that "most young conservatives are comfortable with ethnic diversity and are weary of the Fox News media-politico complex."

There is no acknowledgement that for David Brooks's bosses at the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Times, income stagnation for America's middle- and working-classes was a large part of the point. One of America's biggest problems, according to Bill Buckley, Irving Kristol, James Q. Wilson, Russell Kirk, Midge Decter, and company, was that lucky duckies were mooching off of the wealth created by the talented. The idea was to redistribute income upward by destroying the lucky duckies' claims to income: redistributive taxes, unions, high-quality low-cost public higher education, welfare--and then on to cutting back unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Medicare.

But how then did the conservatives of the 1980s and 1990s think that they could wield power? One road was specious claims of the benefits of supply-side tax cuts, repeated often enough to gain credibility via a complaisant press. The second road was via those whom Brooks calls the "sort of cheesy" Republicans: those like Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and company, who offered the (white, male) lucky duckies the full menu headed by racial supremacy and misogyny: keep the Negroes, the feminizes, the illegals, and the abortionists in their place.

Yes. David Brooks in the 1980s and 1990s writing for his mendacious little magazines and editorial pages was a lucky ducky indeed: it was "good to be a young conservative"then:

David Brooks: The Conservative Intellectual Crisis: "I feel very lucky to have entered the conservative movement... in the 1980s and 1990s... National Review, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page...