"Conservative" columnist and author, David Brooks, in a recent Op-Ed, attempts, as he seems to do ad nauseum, to earn credibility with the left by explaining why President Obama is not the radical that many on the right make him out to be.

Brooks, of course, is nothing more than the right-leaning version of Thomas Friedman.  You know the profile...a self-important, highly enlightened, seer, sooth-sayer, and knower of all that illuminates people on all sides of every issue.  He, like Friedman, loves to position himself as floating well above the fray—looking down on the great unwashed who don't have the sophistication, nor the intellectual capacity, to understand what is so painfully clear to someone blessed with his supernatural analytical skills and brainpower.

The thesis of Brooks' piece is that "Obama is as he has always been, a center-left pragmatic reformer."  He opines: "...he always describes a moderately activist government restrained by trade-offs.  He always used the same on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand sentence structure.  Government should address problems without interfering with the dynamism of the market."  Obama doesn't want to interfere with the dynamism of the market?  Who knew?

Putting aside that Obama had virtually no track record of reforming anything prior to becoming president, is there any denying that his rhetoric, of which there is quite a trail, almost always proselytized positions considerably to the left of what could rationally be represented as mainstream Democrat fare?  Sure, once he saw the presidency was within reach, he became more clever at obfuscating and misdirecting (aided by a fawning media), but can there be any other interpretation for what is on the voluminous video and audio clips over the years that document his liberal utopian ideals? 

You've seen them.

How about the one where he states that he's always been for government-run healthcare and describes how the government will systematically insinuate itself until it inevitably has full responsibility for running it?  Or, the numerous times he's discussed his views on social justice and the need to redistribute wealth in order to level the playing field, including a Chicago Public Radio interview in 2001 where he intimates that the constitution should have been radically reinterpreted to enable the redistribution of wealth.  But instead, similar results are being achieved through community organizing/activism.  You get the idea.

Brooks adds, "Conservatives are wrong to call him (Obama) a big-government liberal.  That's just not a fair reading of his agenda."  Really?

Can Brooks possibly be so clueless?  Or, has he just been blinded by the light (apologies to Manfred Man)?  If Obama were able to rule with impunity, who believes he would not pursue the most radical left agenda in this country's history?  Brooks seems to confuse Obama's inability to sell his ultra-left policies with his desire for said policies.  Humdinger of a miscalculation.

And what about the one area where Obama has supposed non-liberal bona fides—his prosecution of the war in Afghanistan?  Again, who thinks that if he had free reign, he wouldn't pull those troops out in a heartbeat?  Like Bush before him (re: Medicare prescription drug benefit), he's backing a position to earn points with the opposition in the misguided belief that it will help him gain support for his agenda.  Didn't work then.  Isn't working now.

If Obama isn't a big-government liberal, what else might we have to rethink?  Bush 43 wasn't a bumbling communicator?  Harry Reid isn't a milquetoast, ineffectual leader?  New Coke didn't suck?

If the deficit fits....