Guinness is good for you

A subtext of New York Times "smart conservative" David Brooks' columns since the election has been his need to distance himself from the more true-believing elements of Dubya's core support. Consider for instance his role in the vanguard of the counterattack on the moral values interpretation of the election, and his declaration that the real voice of US Evangelicals is not James Dobson or Jerry Falwell, but an English bishop that most people have not heard of.

In Saturday's column, the Brooksian desire for separation came into comic relief, as he declared that he's finding (like Dubya) that thinking about pension reform is hard work, and so that he'd rather be in a Dublin pub drinking a pint. And furthermore, that the nation would be better off if all the key players in Washington political debates downed a few pints too.

We're not making any of this up -- the column's headline is "Lift a Pint for Coalitions," while the hook is that he discussed Social Security reform with Republican Senator Lindsay Graham while the Senator was in Dublin. Leaving aside evidence of a clear lapse by the Irish immigration authorities, we'll at least allow that the Senator was getting into the spirit of things in Dublin:

I was in a hotel room in St. Paul when I connected with Senator Lindsey Graham. As he spoke, I could hear Irish music in the background. I could hear laughter and conviviality ... "If John [fellow Senator] can get Democratic support, count me in," he was saying, as a great roar of laughter arose from the pub behind him ...
And if this culture of negotiation is to be recreated, I'm thinking of a pub - far away and in a happy, happy place - where it just might start.

It's nice to see Brooks sign on to one of the all-time great Homer Simpson-isms, "alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." But is his endorsement of booze a not-so-subtle dig at Washington's most powerful teetotaller, George W. Bush?

UPDATE 23 Dec 2004: TAPped logs another call for more boozing in Washington by a pundit. Bourbon rather than Guinness, though. The pundit in question (Richard Cohen) must be expecting a rough 2005.