David Brooks | |
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.jpg) Brooks in 2022 | |
| Born | (1961-08-11)August 11, 1961 (age 64) |
| Education | University of Chicago (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Columnist,pundit |
| Notable work | Wall Street Journal Opinions writer and editor (1986–1994) The New York Times columnist (since 2003) PBS NewsHour contributor (since 2001) |
| Spouses |
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David Brooks (born August 11, 1961) is a Canadian-born American book author and political and cultural commentator. Though he describes himself as a "moderateRepublican", others have characterised him as centrist, moderate conservative, or conservative, based on his record as contributor to thePBS NewsHour, and asopinion columnist forThe New York Times. In addition to hisshorter form writing, Brooks has authored seven non-fiction books since 2000, two appearing fromSimon and Schuster, and five fromRandom House, the latter includingThe Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), andThe Road to Character (2015).
Beginning as a police reporter inChicago and as an intern atWilliam F. Buckley'sNational Review, Brooks rose to his positions atThe New York Times,NPR, andPBS after a long series of other journalistic positions (film critic forThe Washington Times, reporter andop-ed editor atThe Wall Street Journal, senior editor atThe Weekly Standard, and contributing editor atNewsweek andThe Atlantic Monthly.
Brooks was born in Toronto,Ontario, where his father was working on aPhD at theUniversity of Toronto. Along with his brother, Daniel, David spent his early years living inStuyvesant Town housing, inNew York City. Their father taught English literature atNew York University, while their mother studied 19th-century British history atColumbia University. Brooks was raisedJewish, but rarely attended synagogue in adulthood.[1][2][3] As a young child, he was enrolled in theGrace Church School, an independentEpiscopal primary school in the East Village. When he was 12, his family moved to the well-to-do suburbs of Philadelphia'sMain Line area, where he graduated fromRadnor High School in 1979. In 1983, Brooks earned his Bachelor's Degree, with a history major, from theUniversity of Chicago.[4] His senior thesis was on popular science writerRobert Ardrey.[3]
As an undergraduate, Brooks frequently contributed reviews and satirical pieces to campus publications. His senior year, he wrote a spoof of the lifestyle of wealthy conservativeWilliam F. Buckley Jr., who was scheduled to speak at the university: "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping."[5] To his piece, Brooks appended the note: "Some would say I'm envious of Mr. Buckley. But if truth be known, I just want a job and have a peculiar way of asking. So how about it, Billy? Can you spare a dime?" When Buckley arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Brooks was in the lecture audience and offered him a job.[6]
Upon graduation, Brooks became a police reporter for theCity News Bureau of Chicago, a wire service owned jointly by theChicago Tribune andChicago Sun Times.[4] He says that his experience on Chicago's crime beat had a conservatizing influence on him.[3] In 1984, mindful of the offer he had received from Buckley, Brooks applied and was accepted as an intern at Buckley'sNational Review. According to Christopher Beam, the internship included an all-access pass to the affluent lifestyle that Brooks had previously mocked, including yachting expeditions,Bach concerts, dinners at Buckley'sPark Avenue apartment and villa inStamford, Connecticut, and a constant stream of writers, politicians, and celebrities.
Brooks was an outsider in more ways than his relative inexperience.National Review was a Catholic magazine, and Brooks is not Catholic.Sam Tanenhaus later reported inThe New Republic that Buckley might have eventually named Brooks his successor if it hadn't been for his being Jewish. "If true, it would be upsetting," Brooks says.[3]
After his internship with Buckley ended, Brooks spent some time at the conservativeHoover Institution atStanford University and wrote movie reviews forThe Washington Times.[citation needed]
In 1986, Brooks was hired byThe Wall Street Journal, where he worked first as an editor of the book review section. He also filled in for five months as a movie critic. From 1990 to 1994, the newspaper posted Brooks as an op-ed columnist toBrussels, where he covered Russia (making numerous trips toMoscow); the Middle East; South Africa; and European affairs. On his return, Brooks joined theneo-conservativeWeekly Standard when it was launched in 1994. Two years later, he edited an anthology,Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing.[4][7]
| External videos | |
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 Booknotes interview with Brooks onBobos, July 30, 2000,C-SPAN |
In 2000, Brooks published a book of cultural commentary titledBobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There where he argued that the new managerial or "new upper class" represents a marriage between the liberal idealism of the 1960s and the self-interest of the 1980s.
According to a 2010 article inNew York Magazine written by Christopher Beam,New York Times editorial-page editorGail Collins called Brooks in 2003 and invited him to lunch.
Collins was looking for a conservative to replace outgoing columnistWilliam Safire, but one who understood how liberals think. "I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn't make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window," says Collins. "He was perfect." Brooks started writing in September 2003. "The first six months were miserable," Brooks says. "I'd never been hated on a mass scale before."[3]
One column written by Brooks inThe New York Times, which dismissed the conviction ofScooter Libby as being "a farce" and having "no significance",[8] was derided by political bloggerAndrew Sullivan.[9]
In 2004, Brooks' bookOn Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense was published as a sequel to his 2000 best seller,Bobos in Paradise, but it was not as well received as its predecessor. Brooks is also the volume editor ofThe Best American Essays (publication date October 2, 2012), and authoredThe Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement.[10] The book was excerpted inThe New Yorker in January 2011[11] and received mixed reviews upon its full publication in March of that year.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] It sold well and reached #3 on thePublishers Weekly best-sellers list for non-fiction in April 2011.[26]
Brooks was a visiting professor of public policy atDuke University'sTerry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and taught an undergraduate seminar there in the fall of 2006.[27] In 2013, he taught a course atYale University on philosophical humility.[28]
In 2012, Brooks was elected to theUniversity of Chicago Board of Trustees.[29] He also serves on the board of advisors for theUniversity of Chicago Institute of Politics.[30]
In 2019, Brooks gave aTED talk in Vancouver entitled "The Lies Our Culture Tells Us About What Matters – And a Better Way to Live".[31] TED curatorChris Anderson selected it as one of his favourite talks of 2019.[32]
Ideologically, Brooks has been described as a centrist,[33] a conservative,[34][35][36][37][38] and a moderate conservative.[39][40] Brooks has described himself as a former democratic socialist[41] and "aBurkean... [which] is to be a moderate", saying that such was "what I think I’ve become."[42] He said in a 2017 interview that "[one] of [his] callings is to represent a certain moderateRepublicanWhig political philosophy."[43] In December 2021, he wrote that he placed himself "on the rightward edge of the leftward tendency—in the more promising soil of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party".[44] In 2024, he said he finds himself "rooting for the Democrats about 70 percent of the time" and that he was "almost all the way to joining" the Democratic Party.[41]Ottawa Citizen conservative commentator David Warren has identified Brooks as a "sophisticated pundit"; one of "those Republicans who want to 'engage with' the liberal agenda".[45] When asked what he thinks of charges that he's "not a real conservative" or "squishy", Brooks has said that "if you defineconservative by support for theRepublican candidate or the belief that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, I guess I don't fit that agenda. But I do think that I'm part of a long-standing conservative tradition that has to do withEdmund Burke ... andAlexander Hamilton."[46] In fact, Brooks read Burke's work while he was an undergraduate at theUniversity of Chicago and "completely despised it", but "gradually over the next five to seven years ... came to agree with him". Brooks writes that "my visceral hatred was because he touched something I didn't like or know about myself."[47] In September 2012, Brooks talked about being criticized from the conservative side, saying, "If it's from a loon, I don't mind it. I get a kick out of it. If it'sMichelle Malkin attacking, I don't mind it." With respect to whether he was "the liberals' favorite conservative" Brooks said he "didn't care", stating: "I don't mind liberals praising me, but when it's the really partisan liberals, you get an avalanche of love, it's like uhhh, I gotta rethink this."[46]
Brooks describes himself as beginning as aliberal before, as he put it, "coming to my senses." He recounts that a turning point in his thinking came while he was still an undergraduate when he was selected to present the socialist point of view during a televised debate withNobel laureate free-market economistMilton Friedman.[1] As Brooks describes it, "[It] was essentially me making a point, and he making a two-sentence rebuttal which totally devastated my point. ... That didn't immediately turn me into a conservative, but ..."[48] On August 10, 2006, Brooks wrote a column forThe New York Times titled "Party No. 3". The column imagined a moderateMcCain-Lieberman Party in opposition to bothmajor parties, which he perceived as bothpolarized and beholden tospecial interests.[49]
In a March 2007 article published inThe New York Times titled "No U-Turns",[50] Brooks explained that theRepublican Party must distance itself from the minimal-government conservative principles that had arisen during theBarry Goldwater andRonald Reagan eras. He wrote that these core concepts had served their purposes and should no longer be embraced by Republicans in order to win elections.Alex Pareene commented that Brooks "has been trying for so long to imagine a sensible Republican Party into existence that he can't still think it's going to happen soon."[51]
Before the2003 invasion of Iraq, Brooks argued for American military intervention, echoing the belief of commentators and political figures that American and British forces would be welcomed as liberators.[52][53] In 2005, Brooks wrote what columnistJonathan Chait described as "a witheringly condescending" column portraying SenatorHarry Reid as an "unhinged conspiracy theorist because he accused the[George W. Bush] administration of falsifying itsIraq intelligence."[54][55] By 2008, five years into the war, Brooks maintained that the decision to go to war was correct, but that Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld had botched U.S. war efforts.[56]
In 2015, Brooks wrote that "[f]rom the current vantage point, the decision to go to war was a clear misjudgment" made in 2003 by PresidentGeorge W. Bush and the majority of Americans who supported the war, including Brooks himself.[57] Brooks wrote "many of us thought that, by taking downSaddam Hussein, we could end another evil empire, and gradually open up human development in Iraq and the Arab world. Has that happened? In 2004, I would have said yes. In 2006, I would have said no. In 2015, I say yes and no, but mostly no."[57] Citing theRobb-Silberman report, Brooks rejected as a "fable" the idea that "intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war."[57] Instead, Brooks viewed the war as a product of faulty intelligence, writing that "[t]he Iraq war error reminds us of the need for epistemological modesty."[57]
Brooks was long a supporter ofJohn McCain; however, he disliked McCain's2008 running mate,Sarah Palin, calling her a "cancer" on the Republican Party, and citing her as the reason he voted for Obama in the2008 presidential election.[58][59] He has referred to Palin as a "joke," unlikely ever to win the Republican nomination.[60] But he later admitted during a C-SPAN interview that he had gone too far in his previous "cancer" comments about Palin, which he regretted, and simply stated he was not a fan of her values.[61]
Brooks has frequently expressed admiration for PresidentBarack Obama. In an August 2009 profile of Brooks,The New Republic describes his first encounter with Obama in the spring of 2005: "Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don't know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knewboth better than me...I remember distinctly an image of – we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I'm thinking, (a) he's going to be president and (b) he'll be a very good president."[62] Brooks appreciates that Obama thinks "like a writer," explaining, "He's a very writerly personality, a little aloof, exasperated. He's calm. He's not addicted to people."[47] Two days after Obama's second autobiography,The Audacity of Hope, hit bookstores, Brooks published a column inThe New York Times, titled "Run, Barack, Run," urging the Chicago politician to run for president.[63] However, in December 2011, during a C-SPAN interview, Brooks expressed a more tempered opinion of Obama's presidency, giving Obama only a "B−" and saying that Obama's chances of re-election would be less than 50–50 if elections were held at that time.[64] He stated, "I don't think he's integrated himself with people in Washington as much as he should have."[47] However, in a February 2016New York Times op-ed, Brooks admitted that he missed Obama during the 2016 primary season, admiring the president's "integrity" and "humanity," among other characteristics.[65]
Regarding the 2016 election, Brooks spoke in support ofHillary Clinton, applauding her ability to be "competent" and "normal" in comparison to her Republican counterpart,Donald Trump.[66][67] In addition, Brooks noted that he believed Clinton would eventually be victorious in the election, as he foresaw that the general American public would become "sick of" Trump.[66][67]
When discussing the political emergence of Trump, Brooks strongly critiqued the candidate, most notably by authoring aNew York Times op-ed he titled "No, Not Trump, Not Ever." In this piece, Brooks attacked Trump by arguing he is "epically unprepared to be president" and pointing out Trump's "steady obliviousness to accuracy."[68]
On the August 9, 2019, episode of thePBS NewsHour, Brooks suggested Trump may be asociopath.[69]
Brooks has expressed admiration forIsrael and has visited almost every year since 1991. He supported Israel during the2014 Gaza War.[70]
In writing forThe New York Times in January 2010, Brooks described Israel as "an astonishing success story".[71] He wrote that "Jews are a famously accomplished group," who, because they were "forced to give up farming in theMiddle Ages ... have been living off their wits ever since".[71] In Brooks' view, "Israel's technological success is the fruition of theZionist dream. The country was not founded so straysettlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians inHebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world."[71][72]
Brooks has supported Israel during theGaza war and has emphasized thatHamas andHezbollah must be "degraded".[73][74][75] Despite his support for Israel he has also been critical ofBenjamin Netanyahu and described theIsrael Defense Forces actions in Gaza as "uncivilized" and "barbaric".[75]
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Brooks opposes what he sees as self-destructive behavior, such as the prevalence ofteenage sex anddivorce. His view is that "sex is more explicit everywhere barring real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexuallyabstemious" by "waiting longer to have sex ... [and] having fewer partners". In 2007, Brooks stated that he sees theculture war as nearly over, because "today's young people ... seem happy with the frankness of the left and the wholesomeness of the right." As a result, he was optimistic about the United States' social stability, which he considered to be "in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair".[76]
As early as 2003, Brooks wrote favorably ofsame-sex marriage, pointing out that marriage is a traditional conservative value. Rather than opposing it, he wrote: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity ... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage."[77]
In 2015, Brooks issued his commentary on poverty reform in the United States. His op-ed inThe New York Times titled "The Nature of Poverty" specifically followed the social uproar caused by the death ofFreddie Gray, and concluded that federal spending is not the issue impeding the progress of poverty reforms, but rather that the impediments to upward mobility are "matters ofsocial psychology".[78] When discussing Gray in particular, Brooks claimed that Gray as a young man was "not on the path to upward mobility".[78]
In 2020, Brooks wrote inThe Atlantic, under the headline "The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake", that "recent signs suggest at least the possibility that a new family paradigm is emerging," suggesting that in the place of the "collapsed" nuclear one the "extended" family emerges, with "multigenerational living arrangements" that stretch even "across kinship lines."[79] Brooks had already started in 2017 a project called "Weave", in order, as he described it,[79] to "support and draw attention to people and organizations around the country who are building community" and to "repair [America]'s social fabric, which is badly frayed by distrust, division and exclusion."[80]
Brooks also takes a moderate position onabortion, which he thinks should be legal, but with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months, and illegal afterward, except in extremely rare circumstances.[81]
He has expressed opposition to the legalization ofmarijuana, stating that use of the drug causes immoral behavior. Brooks relates that he smoked it in his youth but quit after a humiliating incident: Brooks smoked marijuana during lunch hour at school and felt embarrassed during a class presentation that afternoon in which he says he was incapable of intelligible speech.[82]
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In reviewingOn Paradise Drive (2004),Michael Kinsley described Brooks' "sociological method" as having "four components: fearless generalizing, clever coinage, jokes and shopping lists." Taking umbrage with the first of these, Kinsley states, "Brooks does not let the sociology get in the way of the shtick, and he wields a mean shoehorn when he needs the theory to fit the joke".[83] This followed the 2004Philadelphia magazine fact-checking ofBobos in Paradise bySasha Issenberg that concluded many of its comments aboutmiddle America were misleading or untrue.[84] Kinsley reported that "Brooks defend[ed] his generalizations as poetic hyperbole".[83] Issenberg likewise noted that Brooks insisted that the book was not intended to be factual but rather to report impressions of what he believed an area to be like: "He laughed" that the book was "'partially tongue-in-cheek'". Issenberg continues, "I went through some of the other instances where he made declarations that appeared insupportable. He accused me of being 'too pedantic,' of 'taking all of this too literally,' of 'taking a joke and distorting it.' 'That's totally unethical', he said."[3]
In 2015, David Zweig expressed the opinion in aSalon piece that Brooks had gotten "nearly every detail" wrong about a poll of high school students in his recent,The Road to Character.[85]
In March 2012,Dan Abrams ofABC News, and then Brooks, were criticized byLyle Denniston with regard to theU.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision inCitizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where alongside the claim that Brooks had "scrambled the actual significance of what the Supreme Court has done", he goes on to state that "[t]hereis a link, but it is only indirect, between the Court’s 2010 decision... and the rise ofSuper PACs" [emphasis added].[86]
Writing in response to Brooks 2015 opinion inThe New York Times, "The New Old Liberalism", Tom Scocca ofGawker, after stating that Brooks was "a dumb partisan hack", went on to state that Brooks "perceived facts and statistics as an opportunity for dishonest people to work mischief", and so did not use them to support his policy positions.[87]Annie Lowrey, responding to Brooks' opinion, "The Nature of Poverty", on May 1, 2015, inNew York magazine, criticized Brooks' basis for his argument for political reform, claiming he used "some very tricksy, misleading math".[88]Sean Illing ofSlate criticized the same article, claiming Brooks took arguments out of context and routinely made bold "half-right" assumptions regarding the controversial issue of poverty reform.[89]
In 2016, Brooks' analyzed theU.S. Supreme Court's decision inDretke v. Haley,[90][91] leadingJames Taranto to the critique that "Brooks's treatment of this case is either deliberately deceptive or recklessly ignorant".[92] In a self-published blog, law professorAnn Althouse argued that in the piece, Brooks "distorts rather grotesquely" by exaggerating the character of then-Texas solicitor generalTed Cruz (who brought the case to the high court).[93]
In 2023, Brooks was criticised online following a tweet presented as misleading that claimed an airport hamburger meal had cost $78, and that the exorbitant cost of hamburgers was the reason Americans were dissatisfied with the economy;[citation needed] his critics pointed out that Brooks' high restaurant bill was the result of his ordering multiple scotches along with his meal.[94]
In 2004, Brooks created an award to honor the year's best political and cultural journalism. Named for philosopherSidney Hook and originally called "The Hookies", the honor was renamed "The Sidney Awards" in 2005. The awards are presented each December.[95][non-primary source needed]
Brooks met Jane Hughes, his first wife, while both attended the University of Chicago. Sheconverted to Judaism[96] and changed her given name to Sarah;[97] they divorced in November 2013.[98][99] Their eldest son volunteered at age 23 to serve in theIsraeli army in 2014, as Brooks shared in a September 2014 interview for Israeli newspaperHaaretz.[70]
Brooksconverted to Christianity over a period between 2013 and 2014.[100] He describes what he calls "numinous experiences", including one in a crowded subway car:
I looked around the car, and I had this shimmering awareness that all the people in it had souls. Each of them had some piece of themselves that had no size, color, weight or shape but that gave them infinite value. The souls around me that day seemed not inert but yearning — some soaring, some suffering or sleeping; some were downtrodden and crying out.These thoughts helped me think more deeply about my job. I had approached journalism with the vague sense that the people we cover have a basic dignity by virtue of being human. But seeing them as creatures with souls, as animals with a spark of the divine, helps me see people in all their majesty. Seeing them simultaneously as fallen and broken creatures both prepared me for their depravities and made me feel more tender toward our eternal human tendency to screw things up. I hope I see each person at greater height and depth.[101]
He writes that "Today, I feel more Jewish than ever, but as I once told some friends, I can’t unread Matthew. For me, the Beatitudes are the part of the Bible where the celestial grandeur most dazzlingly shines through. So these days I’m enchanted by both Judaism and Christianity. I assent to the whole shebang. My Jewish friends, who have been universally generous and forbearing, point out that when you believe in both the Old and New Testaments, you’ve crossed over to Team Christian, which is a fair point."[101]
He married Anne Snyder in 2017; they met while he wroteThe Road to Character and she was hisresearch assistant.[102]
As an American Jew, I was taught to go all gooey-eyed at the thought of Israel ...
His wife is devoutly Jewish—she converted after they married and recently changed her name from Jane Hughes to the more biblical-sounding Sarah Brooks—but he rarely attends synagogue.
I believe in incremental change but constant change. To be a Burkean, in America these days, is to be a moderate, which is what I think I've become. It's not to be a populist right-winger, or a Reaganite-Thatcherite type.
Host: Does David regret his comment about Sarah Palin and her cancer on the Republican party? Brooks: Yeah, I do. I think it was some lunch affair for some magazine, and I was just mouthing off, and so I – I'm not a fan of hers, but that's a little strong.
Host: So how is the president doing? Brooks: You know, I think I'm a little disappointed that he didn't doSimpson-Bowles. I was a little disappointed in the way thedebt has run up, and I don't blame him for running up the debt in theGreat Recession, but I think we needed an exit strategy to get out of it. I think he could have done a little more to promotegrowth, though I think given all the bad things it was going to be tough no matter who was president, no matter who did anything, it was going to be tough to promote growth. So I don't particularly blame him for that. I think he's conducted himself in pretty much an honest way. He's had very littlecorruption. I still have great personal admiration for him. I'm more to hisright, but I give him no worse than a B−. I think he's made some mistakes, but I wouldn't say he's been a bad president.
And I look at that photo, I think, well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.
(40:42) Lamb: Are you divorced or not? Brooks: I am divorced, yes. And I don't want to personally, I don't want to legally, talk about it, but yes, I am divorced. ... I do believe in marriage, mine didn't work out, I desperately want to get married to somebody.
