David Brooks, "The Legitimacy Problem": Americans Are Not Suckers

What happened to David Brooks? Since returning from book writing leave from the op-ed page of The New York Times, he has become tedious and verbose. This was particularly evident in his op-ed entitled "The Tragic Situation" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/12/david-brooks-tragic-situation-israel-is.html), in which he wrote concerning Israel, "The failure to deal with ambiguity is one of the great disorders of the age." Today, in a Times op-ed entitled "The Legitimacy Problem" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/opinion/brooks-the-legitimacy-problem.html?_r=0), Brooks is back with more babble:

"Governing in an age of distrust is different than governing in an age of trust. Government now lacks the legitimacy to impose costs on losers, so politicians face unprecedented pressure to create situations in which everybody looks like winners.

. . . .

The erosion of the mandate won’t kill Obamacare over all. It’ll just make it much more expensive for the government. But the larger lesson is that to sustain a program in this culture, you probably have to rely on policy mechanisms that maximize consumer-style choice, not mandates."

Compare the unintelligibility of David Brooks with the clarity of Charles Krauthammer in his Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Story of the year" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-story-of-the-year/2013/12/19/1d862c98-68f9-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html?wprss=rss_charles-krauthammer):

"In fact, Obamacare is a full-scale federal takeover. The keep-your-plan-if-you-like-your-plan ruse was a way of saying to the millions of Americans who had insurance and liked what they had: Don’t worry. You’ll be left unmolested. For you, everything goes on as before.

That was a fraud from the very beginning. The law was designed to throw people off their private plans and into government-run exchanges where they would be made to overpay — forced to purchase government-mandated services they don’t need — as a way to subsidize others. (That’s how you get to the ostensible free lunch.)"

Or stated even more succinctly, Obamacare amounted to a con job upon consumers, which placed the president at the top of the list of "The biggest Pinocchios of 2013" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/12/16/the-biggest-pinocchios-of-2013/) (Obama garnered three of ten) and "won" the president "Lie of the Year" (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/).

W.C. Fields once stated, "Never give a sucker an even break." Well, Obama and friends are belatedly arriving at the realization that Americans are not suckers and cannot be treated as such.