As best as I can tell, New York Times columnist David Brooks is a well-connected pundit. Powerful people return his phone calls, and when he wants information from top governmental offices, Brooks tends to get it.
And with this in mind, it’s puzzling that Brooks based his entire column today on an easily-checked error. The conservative pundit insists President Obama “declines to come up with a proposal to address” next week’s sequester mess, adding, “The president hasn’t actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration.”
I’ll never understand how conservative media personalities get factual claims like this so very wrong. If Brooks doesn’t like Obama’s sequester alternative, fine; he can write a column explaining his concerns. But why pretend the president’s detailed, already published plan, built on mutual concessions from both sides, doesn’t exist? If you’re David Brooks, why don’t you just pick up the phone, call the West Wing, and say, “Do you folks have a proposal to address the sequester or not?” I’m certain an administration official would help him by sending him exactly what he’s looking for, and then he wouldn’t have to publish claims that are demonstrably wrong.
In the larger context, Brooks’ deeply unfortunate error is symptomatic of a larger problem: as sequestration approaches, we’re stuck in a debate in which facts seem to have very little meaning.









