David Brooks, straining credulity

I understand the temptation to sometimes stick up for your friends, even when they’re wrong. And I certainly can relate to doing your best to “spin” difficult situations to the benefit of your political allies.

But once and a while, when your friends’ mistakes become ridiculous, it’s best not to even try to defend it. If you’re a political columnist, your best bet is to just change the subject and focus on something else. Because sometimes your side is so wrong that defending it makes you look silly.

David Brooks, you have reached just such a time.

Brooks, one of the best writers at the always-conservative Weekly Standard, devotes his column this week to praising President Bush for his successful diplomatic efforts involving the war with Iraq. That’s right, successful. Sure, Brooks says, most of the world believes we’re dangerously misguided, but Bush definitely deserves credit, he argues, for convincing most Americans that the war is a good idea.

“The newspapers are now filled with dissections of the Bush administration’s diplomatic failures,” Brooks writes. “Nobody writes stories about the administration’s incredible domestic accomplishment — bringing the American people around to support the war. It would never occur to most editors to assign such a story. You figure out why.” (Brooks sees “liberal media” conspiracies everywhere. It’s kind of pathetic, and completely wrong.)

Brooks’ entire argument is almost embarrassing. The White House has recently orchestrated one of the most dramatic diplomatic fiascos in American history. Bush has done more to destroy our relationships with long-held allies than could have been thought possible. International institutions that served as the bedrock of a secure, stable world have been carelessly ignored and cast aside by a president’s arrogance and ambition. We have bullied our friends, misled our enemies, and deceived anyone who would listen. In short, Bush has failed an important test of his leadership abilities.

An ambassador from a U.N. Security Council nation told the Washington Post this week that our Iraq debacle was “the most consistent and astonishing defeat” for any country since the United Nations was formed, and that he couldn’t think of “any other time in which the United States has been more isolated.”

And Brooks wants to praise Bush for his skills of persuasion?

But let’s be charitable. Let’s forgive Brooks for overlooking a dramatic foreign policy failure while we focus only on his central point, that Bush has done a “remarkable” job (Brooks’ word) persuading Americans to support the war.

Sorry Dave, you’re wrong about that too.

As recently as Monday — just two days ago — a CNN/USA Today poll showed that 78 percent of Americans supported an Iraqi invasion if the U.N. supported the war. However, only 47 percent supported the war if there was no U.N. vote on our resolution authorizing the use of force, while 50 percent opposed war under those circumstances.

In other words, less than half the population expressed support for war if we didn’t try to get a vote from the U.N. But that’s exactly what happened. The U.S. saw we were going to lose the vote, so we pulled the resolution. This was the only approach that the CNN/USA Today poll showed Americans rejecting.

So David Brooks wants us to believe that Bush deserves praise and admiration — despite the fiasco at the U.N. — for convincing slightly less than half the country that his approach to war is the right one.

Like I said, Dave, sometimes columnists are better off just picking a different topic.