By Susan Shinn
sshinn@salisburypost.com
CHAPEL HILL ó For two men at opposite ends of the political spectrum, David Brooks and E.J. Dionne certainly agree on a lot.
Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, and the liberal Dionne, who writes for The Washington Post, believe that John McCain and Barack Obama are two fine candidates ó the best choices their parties could have put forth.
They also like the choice of Sen. Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate.
They believe that Gov. Sarah Palin is very much an unknown quantity.
Brooks and Dionne participated in a discussion Tuesday night at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Both are Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Readers who are participating in the Post’s Summer Reading Challenge on “Prose & Politics” may especially benefit from their insights. Brooks and Dionne are two of the most widely read political commentators of our time. They have covered the frontrunners for many years.
Bruce Carney, interim dean of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, served as moderator for the event, which was held in the lavishly refurbished Memorial Hall.
Carney started the evening with this question: Will the 2008 campaign be remembered as a page turner, a paradigm shifter, or, after all the sound and the fury, will it be back to business as usual?
Brooks allowed that the ’08 election has the potential to be the most consequential campaign in American history.
The conservative movement is over, he said. “You can’t think when you’re in power. I think we’re entering something new. It’s not a conservative era. It’s something else.”
The economy, Brooks said, is not working for the middle class.
“To me,” he said, “every question comes back to the fact that the institutions of government cannot function properly. There are long, lingering problems.”
According to polls, the disparity between individual happiness and concern about the country’s direction is the sharpest gap in history, Brooks said.
“The next president is trying to prove that faith in government can be restored,” he said.
Dionne said that the ’08 election resembles several previous elections ó the election of 1860, for one, when he and Brooks met “while covering Lincoln.”
More seriously, he said that the 1980 election, in which Republican Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter, is similar to the current one ó in reverse.
“In some ways,” he said, “that’s the best fit.”
He added, “The conservative movement is in a lot of trouble. Inequality has gotten out of hand.”
In 1980, Dionne said, whatever the Democrats were doing was not working ó and they were willing to give the other side a chance.
Political ideologies, he said, are like tool kits. “When it stops working, they throw the tool kit away. That’s what happened in 1980.”
And what could happen in 2008.
Dionne also mentioned the ’32 election.
“Herbert Hoover thought FDR was his weakest opponent” and intervened to have him nominated.
“That may have been one of Hoover’s greatest achievements,” Dionne said as the audience laughed one of many times during the evening.
Truman in ’48 and Carter in ’76 were both cast as reformers.
Brooks said he believed that both of this election’s candidates at heart want to change Washington. He has spent 10 years covering McCain and four covering Obama.
“They’re both genuine reformers,” he said. “Both have incredible character, with weaknesses.”
Obama, he said, is very intelligent, with a great power of perception.
“He has an intellectual depth most politicians are not capable of,” Brooks said. “His weakness, frankly, is that he’s a mediocre senator. He hasn’t really applied himself in the Senate, so we’re taking a risk on him.”
McCain, he said, “has a fantastic moral intuition. He will go after that thing that is not right.”
Because of his experience as a POW, Brooks said, McCain has “an extreme sense of humility. He’s the rarest of creatures: a humble man who is running for president.”
But, he said, “McCain repels organization. He’s been at war with every organization he’s been a member of.”
McCain and Obama, he said, are both “sick and disgusted with Washington.”
Obama wants to unify the Democrats, Brooks said, while McCain “wants to solidify a party that secretly hates him.”
So the question is, Dionne said, are the candidates wolves in sheep’s clothing ó or just sheep?
Both candidates are promising change.
“If Obama loses control of that concept, he’s in trouble,” Dionne said.
McCain, he said, seems to be advocating change without risk, but there’s always risk with change, Dionne said.
The fact that Obama is reaching out for consensus is part of who he is, Dionne said. “He’s liberal in his gut and temperamentally moderate.”
Dionne said that the chaotic nature of McCain’s campaign could translate into a chaotic White House. “You can’t put a structure around him that works.”
Brooks and Dionne agreed wholeheartedly on Obama’s pick of Biden for VP.
“Hillary wasn’t built to be second fiddle and Bill wasn’t built to be third fiddle,” Brooks said of the Clintons.
“As for Palin,” Brooks said, “with E.J., you’re about to see Mount Vesuvius over here. Her resumé is thin, but Barack Obama’s resumé was thin. I don’t know the character of the woman. I’m agnostic on Sarah Palin.”
Dionne is not.
“Someone sent me a button that said, ‘Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor,’ ” he said. “What bothers me is they have not let her out of their control.”
Palin, he said, has not made the usual rounds of Sunday talk shows and interviews.
“It bothers me that McCain met her at most twice before he nominated her,” Dionne said.
Carney then inquired whether race was a dead issue in this campaign.
Dionne said that with voters under age 45, race is not playing a large role. “To older votes, I think it’s complicated. For some voters, race is our original sin. It’s hard to see in the polls. Is there something there? Is it enormous? It will be a factor.”
“It’s sitting out there,” Brooks agreed. “I just don’t think we know.”
Obama, he said, eludes people. “Every element of Obama’s life is out of the category most people get. They have trouble grabbing him. I have trouble grabbing him. He’s an elusive guy.”
His coolness, Dionne said, can make him seem detached. “But if he can display that tough Kennedy coolness, he can win.”