What David Brooks sees as virtuous, I see as appalling ignorance:
Many economists say the cutback in consumption will hurt the economy in the short run. But, according to the Heartland Monitor poll, 61 percent of Americans said the decline in consumption would "help the economy as it would create more savings that could be invested to create or expand business."
Some economists say the government should be spending more now to stimulate a recovery. Thirty-eight percent of Americans seem to agree with that. But 56 percent have said "government spending when the government is already running a deficit is the wrong approach during an economic downturn because it is only a temporary solution that increases long-term debt."
According to Brooks, somewhere in that compilation of pro-supply-sided, anti-Keynesian buffoonery is the collective wisdom of the wise masses -- a tautology loved by the selfsame herd since Andrew Jackson, but feared by thinkers since Tocqueville. The fragile premise, put further, goes like this: If the majority gives stupidity a thumbs-up, then stupidity -- see, for example, above -- is somehow converted to righteousness. Brooks calls this latest conversion -- again, see above-- an American "values restoration."
Richard Hofstadter, he of the paranoid style diagnosis, called it American anti-intellectualism. And with that, it's hard to disagree. The history of popular ignorance as wise policy goes back to Aristophanes, and God knows the American Republic has been no exception. Nothing in politics sells like the Everyman's common sense, even when it's empirically nonsensical: save, and jobs will come, even with less demand; and government belt-tightening in a recession is smart.
One can always hope that Brooks' "Heartland Monitor poll" is a flawed outlier and thus the majority isn't as dumb as Brooks hopes. Unfortunately, such a reality would make little difference. For starters, the majority barely turns out to vote as such in presidential years, while a frightening and increasingly radical minority rules primaries and midterms. Second, all of the commentariat play Brooks' game (I know I do) -- that of cherry-picking polls and polling results, to prove the popular virtue of their point.
Still, the question remains: Is democratic ineptitude nonetheless virtuous, by virtue of its democracy? In time, we do seem to get things right -- think gender equality, gay rights and civil rights in general -- but oh, how we do take that time. Our present and most poignant hurdle: elementary economics.