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Is Obama Trying to Fix Too Much at Once?

Despite new prez's gifts, Brooks worries he's moving too fast

By Jason Farago, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 24, 2009 8:35 AM CST

(Newser) – David Brooks is not a liberal, but the New York Times columnist doesn't hesitate to call himself "a great admirer of Barack Obama and those around him." Yet as the new administration has thrown itself at a dozen staggering problems, from fixing health care and the auto industry to creating jobs and reviving banks, Brooks' conservative "alarm bells" have been ringing. "I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well," he writes.

Conservatives are not opposed to change, says Brooks; rather, they believe that all change must be gradual because "we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism." Obama and his team may be smart, but by concentrating so much power in so few, the administration has set liberalism a make-or-break exam. "If they mostly fail," says Brooks, "then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity."

[Images (4)]

[Quotes (2)]

President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks at the Fiscal Responsibility Summit, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009, in the Old Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama pause as he speaks at the close of the Fiscal Responsibility Summit, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009, in the Old Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, left, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs listen to President Barack Obama during a news conference in the White House. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, left, and Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary, talk before the start of a luncheon with President Barack Obama at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. (Pool Photo/Lawrence Jackson)

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I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the US economy.
- David Brooks, New York Times columnist

It’ll be interesting to see who’s right. But I can’t even root for my own vindication. The costs are too high. I have to go to the keyboard each morning hoping Barack Obama is going to prove me wrong. - David Brooks

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Is Obama Trying to Fix Too Much at Once?