Credit: David S. Holloway/CNN

Let the games begin. I say “games,” because the race certainly has not started yet, and CNN tried to run Monday night’s GOP primary debate in New Hampshire like an episode of America’s Next Top Model. Sure, there are candidates and minor squabbles, but for the most part, the GOP realizes that it will take a unified effort to confront President Obama. The “debate” was closer to a cordial introduction to the candidate’s personalities, or, as the Atlantic called it, a “Manchester Lovefest.”

Classes are out for summer and grades are coming in. I rated each of the candidate’s performances, and provided an explanation for my mark. I do not have a Ph.D. in Reality Television (or whatever qualification you need to comment on the internet about politics), so I asked Professor John Pitney Jr., a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, for his opinions on each candidates performance.

The following grades are based only on the candidate’s performance in Monday night’s debate, NOT on previous records or their ideological views.

Republican presidential hopefuls (L-R) Rick Santorum (R-PA), Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain pose at the first New Hampshire debate of the 2012 campaign at St. Anslems College in Manchester, New Hampshire June 13, 2011. REUTERS/Joel Page

Michelle Bachmann: C+

Credit: Alan Colmes

Who: Minnesota Congresswoman

Quote: “In the last two hours, I’ve learned more about the goodness of the American people — from the question from John, his three sons that are serving in the Navy, his wonderful service.”

I know that she was declared the #winner of last night’s debate by the national news media, but that is only because everyone had such low expectations for her. Just because she was able to hide her craziness for one night, and come off as mediocre, does not by any stretch of the imagination mean she won. It’s like telling your college-aged kid that you’re proud of them for not dying of alcohol poisoning when they get back from school for the summer. That said, Bachmann’s personality, Tea Party rhetoric, and 23 foster kids attract a particular type of voter. If Sarah Palin joins the fray, however, let the race for craziest candidate begin.

Professor Pitney’s Grade: A-

“Bachmann gained ground.  She drove home her status as a tax lawyer and foster mom, which most people probably didn’t know.”

Newt Gingrich: B

Credit: Zip

Who: Former Speaker of the House of Representatives

Quote: “Take half of the current Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy in Washington, transplant it to Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. You’ll have more than enough people to control the border.”

G-unit did pretty well last night, especially considering he probably had to prep all by himself. For those of you not following the race, last Thursday, a number of aides on Gingrich’s staff as well as his campaign manager suddenly resigned, reducing his chances of winning from almost none, to virtually none. Last night, however, he came off as experienced, knowledgeable, and earnest, which should probably be a baseline for candidacy, but you can’t have it all I guess…

Professor Pitney’s Grade: B

“Gingrich didn’t make any big gaffes but did not dazzle.  In light of his campaign’s troubles last week, he needed to be spectacular, and he wasn’t.  As a former college professor, he does best when talking for 60 minutes, not 60 seconds.”

Mitt Romney: A

GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images

Who: Former Massachusetts Governor

Quote: “Any one of the people on this stage would be a better president than President Obama.”

Romney was in a completely different mind set. He did not engage with any of the other candidates, and it was obvious that he was already focused on President Obama. Romney avoided injury (although he need not worry because he passed universal health care in his state) and honestly was likable. He made jokes, announced the Bruins score before a commercial break (which sucked for those of us who TiVo’d the game), and made other gestures that showed that he does have a heart, fiscally-responsible experience and most importantly of all, a brain.

Professor Pitney’s Grade: A

“Romney did well.  He looked presidential and gave sharp answers.  He has a slight lead and probably widened it last night.”

Ron Paul: A

Who: Texas Congressman

Quote: “Free markets will give you 10 percent or 15 percent growth

or whatever and you will not have to turn it off because you think it’s going to cause inflation. It doesn’t work that way.”

AP Photo/Nick Wass

I’m sorry, but Ron Paul was awesome last night. The New Jersey

Newsroom (ironically) said it best, when they referred to the debate as “Ron Paul and the Pandering 6.” The merits of libertarianism can be debated at great lengths, but at least Ron Paul has an ideology and sticks to it. Contrary to pretty much every single other politician, Paul’s foreign policy, economic policy, and social policy all actually stem from his ideology – which became clear when CNN shifted the questions to social issues. Instead of trying to pick up the schizophrenic portion of right-wing voters that want no government involvement most of the time (unless it concerns an issue they care about like social security, Medicare, foreign policy, abortion, gay marriage… you get the idea) Ron Paul stuck to his (deregulated) libertarian guns.

Professor Pitney’s Grade: B+

“Ron Paul probably fared better among Republicans than he did 4 years ago.  In 2008, he was a sharp critic of Bush foreign policy, which got him jeers. Now he makes the same criticisms of President Obama foreign policy, which is more acceptable to a partisan audience.”

Tim Pawlenty: F-

Credit: Carrie Devorah / WENN [Photo via Newscom

Quote: “Senator Biden has been wrong about every major strategic decision in the modern history of the international conflict and military.”

I had heard optimistic things about Pawlenty, but I can’t understand how he made it this far. After watching him last night and promptly vomiting on my notes, I tried to figure out how he was so extraordinarily bad and wishy-washy that it fascinated me. This man has it all: between backing away from his critiques of Romney, speaking without saying anything, taking the most widely accepted position on an issue no matter what, and beginning every sentence with his credentials, it is clear now how he was elected. Unfortunately for T-Paw (as he refers to himself on his website), his first debate left most of us who didn’t know much about him with a bad taste in our mouths.

Professor Pitney’s Grade: B-

“Pawlenty did poorly.  In his answer on Romneycare, he tried to sound civil but ended up sounding evasive.  To the extent that the debate introduced Pawlenty to a wider audience, it was a bad first impression.”

Herman Cain: B-

Credit: UPI/Alexis C. Glenn

Who: Former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza

Quote: “To paraphrase my grandmother, with the situation in Libya and many of these other situations, they’re not simple situations. It’s a mess. It’s just an absolute mess.”

Cain did well. He struggled when pressured about his insensitive comments regarding religion, but I doubt that the people who might support him cared. He could have hammered home his Washington outsider status a little harder, but he definitely got the whole businessman problem-solver persona out there. He “kneaded” (sorry, I couldn’t stop myself) to be more inspiring then he was, however, and while he may gain steam and become this year’s Huckabee, he’s not a real contender.

Professor Pitney’s Grade: B-

“Cain stumbled over the Muslim question.  In the competition for tea party voters, Bachmann defeated him.”

Credit: Igor Volsky

Rick Santorum: D

Who: Former Senator from Pennsylvania

Quote: “I think the Tea Party is a great backstop for America. I love it when people hold up this Constitution and say we have to live by what our founders laid out for this country.”

Santorum was not memorable. I tried to think of something to write, and all that came to mind were feverish hand motions and the phrase “remarkably average.”

Professor Pitney’s Grade: B+

“Santorum came across as sincere but he didn’t break out of the pack.”

The whole debate was a letdown. If it revealed anything at all, it’s that the GOP candidates will need someone strong to join in the race, a double-dip in the economy, or Osama Bin Laden to rise from the grave if they want to compete with President Obama’s wit and oratory skills in the 2012 debates.

Want more articles by Nathan Falk? You may also enjoy his article on David Brooks’s visit to Scripps or his piece on the CMC Trailers

Brooks is one of the New York Times’ most widely read columnists and the author of several books. He is also an excellent speaker who was astute, insightful, and hilarious at the same time. Brooks is known informally as the conservative liberals love, or at least respect. After Claremont McKenna’s Athenaeum hosted controversial conservatives Bill Kristol and Ken Mehlman this fall, Brooks restored faith in the possibility of intellectual discussion between political opponents.

Brooks spoke broadly about politicians as ordinary people, not as celebrities. He painted a picture of elected officials as hard-working civil servants with normal emotions and good intentions, a side rarely seen in the mainstream media.  Politicians are generally in politics for the right reasons, and are simply people trying to respond to the pressures they feel, Brooks explained.

“Politicians are creatures of the context they are in, ” he told the audience.

But the context shift has been quite dramatic. He cited many studies documenting the trend towards bigger egos, and described the past 60 years in America as a “shift from culture of self-effacement to a culture of self-expression.” For instance, when high school seniors were asked if they were a very important person, in 1950, 12% said they were, and in 2005, 80% said they were. Brooks saw these trends as indicative of the change in the country’s general ethos. As a result of this greater sense of self-importance, America as a whole has greater debt, irresponsibility, polarization, partisanship, and distrust of authority.

“Moral materialism” has always pervaded American culture, according to Brooks. But he cited five reasons to have hope:

1.     We are a serious country; we aren’t going to wait until we fall off a cliff before we respond.

2.     Conversation about the big issues has started.

3.     The rise of social movements such as the Obama movement and the Tea Party movement show citizen unrest with the current situation.

4.     Fundamentally, if you strip away all government, we still have a very healthy culture.

5.     America is still America, and it is just as dynamic as it always has been.

Brooks called for humility, selflessness, and “epistemological modesty” (respect for the systems that have been in place) in politics, but his prescription was even more specific. He urged politicians to undertake projects that both parties wanted to accomplish (such as reforming the tax code) because it would not only solve major issues, but foster compromise and camaraderie between officials. He breaks from convention by encouraging less transparency in lawmaking, making an analogy that “government should be veiled in the same way that middle aged people should wear clothes.”

It was refreshing to hear a rational political analyst who can look at an issue through more than one lens. The fact that reasonable pundits exist inspires optimism, and it was enlightening to hear a political argument presented rationally, carefully, and with humility.

The concept is pretty simple, on its face. Each spring, at least two professors at two of the Claremont Colleges teach a course on the United States Congress. Each student in the courses plays a Senator. The classes meet in the evenings for a State of the Union Address, gather as committees to draft and report out legislation, and pass at least two bills during a floor session. This year Pomona students, representing the Democrats, faced off against Claremont McKenna Republicans in a test that made the healthcare struggle feel brief.

These colors always run

To be fair, the simulation has never been easy to execute. Just imagine putting a couple dozen type-A personalities, who are politically obsessed, in close quarters for four days. Havoc usually ensues. Just last year, ‘President Obama’ was locked in a bathroom and Harry Reid was ousted as majority leader. Another year, when the students were particularly dull, the faculty members (or ‘Simulation Gods’) decreed that the North Koreans had nuked an oil pipeline in Alaska.

This year’s simulation stayed true to Senate-style. The Senate was supposed to meet at 6:30 on Thursday to begin its floor session, and only two and a half hours later… nothing. At this point, the Simulation Gods announced they were “grumpy” and went to encourage the minority party, whose meeting had delayed the simulation, to venture forth and begin. Ultimately, the Simulation Gods managed to cajole the Senate into action through the use of their “capricious” power (their word, not mine), and by doling out proxy votes.

Things got interesting around 9:15, when Tea Party protesters stormed the Senate floor chanting “Kill the bill!” and “Down with problems!” Rowdy screams and chants of “USA!” and “The South will rise again” could be heard from a crowd gathered outside the chamber throughout the night.

Despite the commotion, the ‘Senate’ managed to pass numerous bills throughout the course of the evening, including landmark legislation such as “Subsidies for America’s Future,” which Senator Franken was overheard complaining about as “something we’ve never seen or heard of before.” Other measures considered included funds for clean coal and nuclear technology. An unusually grumpy Senator Harkin was overheard saying “I just don’t trust them,” presumably in reference to Republicans. So, much like the actual Senate, personal animosity played a role in the functioning— or lack thereof— of Claremont’s Senate.

Simulations are notoriously difficult to run well. Professor David Menefee-Libey (Congress God from Pomona) said, “I didn’t believe in this when I came here in 1989.” Past simulations he had participated in were “hokey,” but this simulation has a lot of merit. “I have alums who come back 20 years later” because of this simulation. It is “one of the most powerful educational experiences.”

Despite the quirky nature inherent in any simulation, the event provides a unique learning experience far closer to reality than most people would like to admit. In 1996 the ‘Senate’ passed a welfare reform bill which resembled the bill that President Clinton had vetoed the year before. During the debrief, Professor Menefee-Libey told his class that it was unrealistic to think the Senate would pass— or that the president sign— a bill which so closely resembled something he had previously opposed. Four months after the Claremont Senate passed welfare reform, the United States Senate followed suit, passing a bill that would become one of President Clinton’s signature accomplishments.

Claremont’s Congress is filled with the same indulgent pettiness, personal vendettas, and unavoidable distrust you might find roaming those marble halls in Washington, D.C. But this is not an extended soap opera— though it may seem like that at times. On what other college campus will you overhear students arguing passionately about the interpretation of Riddick’s Rules of Senate Procedure?

Assigning grades for such an endeavor, where secret deals are the norm and there is so much information to track, is a difficult task. At Pomona, students “don’t really get credit” for the simulation, according to Professor Menefee-Libey. But CMC’s Professor Pitney uses a three-pronged approach. First, Pitney “triangulates” information through observation and student leaks. He then assigns a paper on their simulation experiences, and on lessons learned. Finally, he uses anonymous peer evaluations, asking students to determine who performed the best.

Studying Congress, as if it did not have those features, defeats the point. Congress is not an abstraction, or a textbook creation for a comparative government class. It is a kingdom with 535 chiefs–and no, wiseass, D.C. and Guam don’t count. You cannot begin to understand Congress, just as you would be lost during the simulation, without learning the personalities and the politics of the players involved.

Indeed, as time has passed, life has begun to imitate art. Adam Kokesh CMC ’07 and Craig McPherson CMC ’06 are both alums of the simulation, playing Ted Kennedy and Pat Roberts respectively. Both are currently running for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Congress with Professor Pitney remains the best class I have taken in my three years at CMC. The class is what it is in large part because of the simulation. So while you and your friends may well be worried about the State of TNC, consider for a moment the State of the Nation (both real and imagined). Consider the impact that practical learning can have on your college experience. Consider taking Congress.

The CMC Celeb section features interesting personal stories and there is no better celeb to start with than Isaac Goldberg. Isaac, a senior from Scarsdale, NY, is a passionate Democrat. He is majoring in Government with a sequence in Leadership. Isaac spends his free time playing on the CMC Regulators baseball team. He is the President of the Democrats of the Claremont Colleges and has political experience that would make most CMCers drool. Isaac has worked a number of internships. Notably, he has worked for two Congressional campaigns and on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C. Most impressive of all, Isaac was offered the unique opportunity to work on Barack Obama’s 2008 bid for the White House.

To get to know Isaac better, the Forum asked him a set of six questions that can be found in all future CMC Celeb articles:

“The Six”

1. What are the top 5 most played songs on your iTunes?

1. Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen
2. Cotton Fields, Credence Clearwater Revival
3. The Weight, The Band
4. You Don’t Know How it Feels, Tom Petty
5. Perfect Gentleman, Wyclef Jean

Billed by both the Ath and her own website as “the last protege of Ansel Adams,” Cook is clearly a talented photographer, and her work reflects her studies with Adams. For example, like Adams she shoots in black and white and does some landscape work. Beyond those base similarities, her work echoes the clean style, high contrast, and simple subject matter of Adams. Even if I didn’t think her art was notable — lots of important museums do; her works are part of the permanent collections at the Met, MoMA, and the Smithsonian, to name a few. Her art is not in question here, but rather her (in)ability to reveal something about herself and her work.

For her talk, Cook showed a number of her portraits (most of which, if not all, were readily available on her website) and said a few words on each photograph, sometimes only mentioning the subject’s name and occupation. That was it. Though her commentary revealed some clues as to her methods, working style, and occasionally short anecdotes about her notable subjects, she gave almost nothing of herself to the audience.

Katherine Graham, Jorge Louis Borges, Francis Crick, Merce Cunningham, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jamaica Kincaid, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Janis, Philip Johnson and David Whitney, Francois Mitterrand, Dorothy Norman, Mirium Rothschild, Steven Spielberg, Dorothea Strauss, Maya Lin and Daniel Wolf — do those names mean anything to you? I only knew about 7 out of 17 of those names and I consider myself to be at least moderately culturally literate. How about a little context? A good speaker neither overestimates nor underestimates the audience’s intelligence (or in this case, cultural literacy). For an address to a school with limited theater opportunities, no arts programs, almost complete neglect for creative talents (save Ath events like this one), Cook might have tailored her comments to a more ignorant, but curious crowd.

Her background as a fine art photographer was also unclear. To have had the opportunity to photograph really important, influential individuals, such as the publisher of the Washington Post, a founding member of the Beat movement, the former president of France, and a three-time Academy Award winning director, one must ask– how? why? Cook never addressed how she was able to gain access to these individuals. For example, Cook photographed Michelle and Barack Obama in 1996 as part of her book featuring images of couples– how did the young politician and his wife come across her radar?

These were the only facts I could gather about her:  she had a wealthy background as her parents collected art and owned a De Kooning, she speaks excellent French, she’s well-traveled, and most importantly, she has friends in high places.  Now clearly not all speakers come to the Ath to talk about themselves, but at least they speak at length about their work, their research, their industry, or something, no?

Though Cook admitted that she chose an arbitrary title for her talk (“What is a portrait?”), her insight on what makes a good photograph was pretty unoriginal. “I felt like I revealed something of who he was,”  she said of photograph of a bookstore owner Jacob Zeiltin.  “He thought the portrait looked more like him than he did.”

Maybe I’m a jaded art history major, or maybe, Cook doesn’t have a whole lot to say and should stick to what she does best — taking beautiful portraits.

Most Birthers claim that Obama was born in Kenya, while others think his birth occurred in Indonesia.  Even though Obama has released a copy of his birth certificate showing that he was born on Oahu, these conspiracy theories continue to animate the fanatical right.

What is most surprising about these conspiracy theories is the number of relatively mainstream people willing to associate themselves with the Birthers or at least recognize the issue as a legitimate controversy.  One of CNN’s many reasons for dumping Lou Dobbs was his repeated raising of Birther issues.  More predictably, The Birthers have found audiences on conservative talk radio and conservative web sites such as Free Republic and WorldNetDaily.  The number of people who have serious doubts that Obama was born in the United States is shockingly high.  According to one poll, 28% of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States or are unsure.  These numbers, however, ignore an important geographic disparity: doubt about Obama’s place of birth is far higher in the South than anywhere else in the country. In the South, only 47% of respondents said they believe Obama was born in the United States, with 30 % unsure and 23% convinced he’s foreign born.

Many Republican politicians find themselves in an uncomfortable position when it comes to Birther conspiracy theories.  On the one hand, the Birther movement kills the Republicans’ credibility among the vast majority of the population and Republicans.  At the same time,   Rep. Mike Castle, a moderate Republican congressman from Delaware, was blindsided at a rally in July when a near-hysterical woman accused him of ignoring the “truth” that Obama was a citizen of Kenya.  Wanting to pander to the fringe without becoming entirely discredited by the lunatics, many Republicans have opted to align themselves only tangentially with the Birther movement.  For example, Republican congressman of John Campbell of California proposed a bill that would require presidential candidates to prove they are “natural-born citizens.”  On MSNBC, Chris Matthews interviewed Campbell and repeatedly asked him if he believed Obama was a natural-born citizen.  The extreme evasiveness of Campbell’s answers perfectly demonstrates his “wink-wink” strategy of secretly pandering to fringe elements of the conservative movement without having his reputation sullied by outright association.

As a final note to seniors still seeking employment, the Birthers are willing to throw down cash for investigations of Obama’s past.  Neil Sankey, a former member of Scotland Yard, has been hired by Birthers to investigate Obama’s personal history.  I know most CMC alums can’t match Sankey’s background, but perhaps “Topics in Forensic Science” has taught some desperate seniors enough to follow in the footsteps of Jonathan Ames.

Once The Terminator became our Cyborg Governor, it was only a matter of time until the highest position in the land was infiltrated by The Machines (yeah, I did just combine Matrix and Terminator terminology, so what? I’m an equal-opportunity conspiracy theorist).

This video is a continuous stream of 130 photos straight from the State Department’s flickr - BOOM, CREDIBILITY. Watch as Obama strikes an uncannily similar facial pose in every single picture, with almost mechanical precision. (Via Daily Intel)

Just don’t get duped by the congenial flash of those pearly whites – I’m pretty sure they are made of a titanium alloy of some sort… from the future.

Rampant hyperbole aside, I too have my doubts about Obamacare.  Namely, how are we going to cut costs while expanding coverage?  Those new medical services aren’t going to pay for themselves.  Rather than deal with these sorts of concerns directly, the President has chosen to deal in lofty parables:

“There’s going to be some disagreement, but if there’s broad agreement that, in this situation the blue pill works better than the red pill, and it turns out the blue pills are half as expensive as the red pill, then we want to make sure that doctors and patients have that information available to them.”

Cue Morpheus and the Matrix: welcome to the desert of the health care sector.  Notably, Obama is advocating the blue pill, the one that makes you “believe… whatever you want to believe.”  Costs will be cut.  Never mind that Congressional Budget Office report.  Look at all those other countries with single payer and more universal systems that have lower costs.

What these macro international comparisons of the percentage of GDP spent on health care across various countries neglect is the very real micro problem of US government’s finances.  Simply put, we don’t got money.  And if you’ve ever seen one of those scary ass J-shaped charts of entitlement spending, you know it’s only going to get worse.  Besides, Americans like consuming things.  Why should health care be any different?  Maybe we just like consuming health care services and thus we spend more of our aggregate national income.   I’m reminded of my elderly aunt who apparently is only capable of talking about her and her friends’ health problems.

What it really comes down to is that those systems are more cost effective because they’re better structured.  But it’s not like we can just wave a magic wand and get their health care system.  Liberal pundits are worried that delay will mean no reform, but that’s not the case.  What they really mean by reform here is change.  Delay means a lessened likelihood of substantial change to the status quo (in terms of the governments’ role).  But rushing the bill increases the likelihood that not all of the several hundred page monstrosity of legalese argot will be properly vetted.  Cough, the stimulus, cough.  Rushing means we’re more likely to get a substantial change, but it’s questionable whether that will be for the good—i.e. reform.

The situation is becoming increasingly tenuous for Obama.  His original timeline is in shambles.  Obamacare is slowly crumbling in the polls; it was only with a desperate this will cost me my presidency push that Obama was able to stop Blue Dogs from killing his pet project.  But they still have serious doubts.  And that’s not to mention the Senate or the electoral implications for 2010.  Yet, in every crisis there is an opportunity.

This could be a Nixon goes to China moment.  The public thinks Obama is focused on expanding coverage to the uninsured over cutting costs by over a 3:1 margin.  Republicans and Democrats are roughly united in their belief; the discrepancy between the percentage of Republicans and the percentage of Democrats who believe Obama is focused on expanding coverage is within the margin of error.  What if Obama jettisoned the public option and the road to single payer in favor of a narrower bill focused on cutting costs and disentangling perverse incentives?  This would immediately destroy Republicans’ best argument against him (that he’s an overspending far-left liberal) and would make real his post-partisanship rhetoric in a very tangible way.

The plan could start by eliminating the subsidy to employer-based health care, which just obfuscates the costs and benefits of health insurances.  Obama’s wonky head of Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orzag, puts the issue well: “I very firmly believe that capitalism is not founded on excessively high subsidies to private firms. That is what this system delivers right now.” The now defunct wonkish Wyden bill would be another place to look for good ideas.

This could only be a victory for Obama and a much needed boost to his bipartisan credentials.  So far, his efforts at congressional bipartisanship have been mostly symbolic:

“Republicans said this White House’s effort at bipartisanship had been one of symbols — presidential calls, invitations to the White House, regular tending by such high level officials as Mr. Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff — rather than substance.
“We hear from them all the time,” Mr. Alexander said. “They said the right things. They are as cordial as you can be.”

More pertinently, how could Republican’s spin this into failure?  “Obama caved into our common sense pressure and abandoned his socialistic medicine agenda.”  Translated: “Obama failed in his pursuit of a leftist policy agenda and pursued a magnanimous middle ground.”  Sounds like a win to me.

Such a move would be the best possible type of compromise: not only will both sides give something up, but it would actually be in the best interest of the nation.  Our healthcare costs really are skyrocketing, and there’s a lot we can and should do on that front.  But it’s a bit disingenuous to conflate our broken healthcare system vis-à-vis its skyrocketing costs with the social justice question of whether we want universal coverage.  For Obama, the question he needs to ask himself is simple: do I care more about my legacy and post-partisanship or liberalism?

“Being a conservative columnist at the New York Times is like being Chief Rabbi at Mecca,” joked Brooks about working for a newspaper that many believe to have liberal-leaning ideologies.

A young boy with his parents at a “be-in” in Central Park (“where hippies could go to Central Park and just ‘be’”), Brooks saw a man burn his five dollar bill and throw it down, so instinctively Brooks picked it up. He jested that the step to pick up the bill was his “first step to the right.”

“Good journalists tend to be aloof and emotionally detached,” said Brooks, who was both witty and personable in his speech. “They say what they think and they don’t have trouble being honestly critical of even the people they like.”

Brooks, who grew up in the highly liberal Greenwich Village neighborhood of NYC, related the influences thoughout his life that affected his political views. A former liberal himself, Brooks admitted to having been deeply inspired into the ideology of conservatism by William Frank Buckley, Jr., who passed away the same morning of this speech. Brooks spent a good portion of his talk on Buckley’s illustrious career and amiable personality.

A common conviction among conservatives is a “distrust in government,” alleged Brooks, who expressed his view that the world is too complicated for the government to fully understand and successfully fix with legislation. He addressed the state of conservatism and the Republican Party, whose base has been rapidly eroding and many of its followers dissipating into both the liberal and independent camps. Unlike the confidence in conservatism that Buckley was able to inspire, Brooks expressed the unfortunate truth that the modern conservative movement has “too many sleezeballs rather than eyeballs” (think Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter). The growing consensus among conservatives, according to Brooks, is that Republican leaders are not genuinely representing the ideology of their own party.

Brooks went on to address the political culture of our time, as well as a range of social issues and current events – such as health care, global warming, the occupation of Iraq, and the ongoing 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. He expressed his skepticism for “Obamamania,” but did not stop short of praising Senator Barack Obama for his many admirable qualities. He seemed certain that Senator Hillary Clinton has effectively lost the race for the Democratic nomination. Brooks also conveyed his “love” for Senator John McCain, who he believes is deeply motivated by a sense of honor.

According to Brooks, the general election will be a contest between the nonpartisan left-winger, Obama, and a nonpartisan right-winger, McCain.

The honesty, eloquence and comical nature of Brooks’ speech offered a fresh perspective which, even as a non-conservative, I believe was worth hearing.