Smart conservative, oh yes

David Brooks, New York Times columnist (subs. req'd), doesn't know enough about British politics to know that when you use the put-down

Harriet Miers, the John Major of American jurisprudence,

you can't then go on and use John Major's most ridiculed phrase as the capstone for the column:

When I cut myself loose from the push and shove of today's weary political titans, and go back to basics, I find myself strangely invigorated.

Brooks has previously advocated pints of Guinness all round as a way of improving American public policy debates but his unwitting adoption of Majorism is sadly a step down from that.