David Brooks could be a new guru for David Cameron

I posted a report on David Cameron’s child wellbeing speech on Friday morning and still hope to write an analysis of it in the next few days.  It appears to be a very significant speech with many positive ingredients (excepting the too heavy implication of a contradiction between capitalism and community strength) and if he is serious about its content then it’s a hugely important statement of the future direction of his Conservatism.  As I was reading Mr Cameron’s speech (which, to me, seems to be saturated with the thinking of his speechwriter Danny Kruger) I also kept thinking of New York Times columnist David Brooks.  Listed below are some key extracts of Mr Brooks’ writing from the last year.  If we’re trying to identify a key guru for Mr Cameron I nominate Mr Brooks…

The protective state: “For a hundred years we debated the economic reach of the state, but that debate's basically done. The next one will be over where the state should erect guardrails in a mobile and fragmented world.” (14/5/06)

Culture is the leading factor in fighting poverty: “In the current issue of The American Prospect, Garance Franke-Ruta also notes the interplay between values and economic issues. ''Traditional values have become aspirational,'' she writes. ''Lower-income individuals simply live in a much more disrupted society, with higher divorce rates, more single moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and interfamily strife, than do the middle- and upper-middle-class people they want to be like…” If you are a middle-class woman, you have more to fear from divorce than from outsourcing. If you have a daughter, you're right to worry more about her having a child before marriage than about her being a victim of globalization. This country's prosperity is threatened more by homes where no one reads to children than it is by big pharmaceutical companies.” (26/1/06)

Beat inequality with love: “The people who do well not only possess skills that can be measured on tests, they have self-discipline (which is twice as important as I.Q. in predicting academic achievement, according to a study by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman). They conceive of their lives as following a script, progressing upward through stages. They benefit from inherited cultural traits.  Some economists believe we should reduce inequality by restructuring the economy -- raising taxes on the rich and redistributing money to the poor. That's fine, but it won't get you very far. In Britain, Gordon Brown has redistributed large amounts of money from rich to poor regions, but regional inequality has increased faster under the current government than under Margaret Thatcher.  Income inequality is driven by human capital inequality, and human capital can't be taxed and redistributed. You have to build it at the bottom to ensure maximum fairness…. If there's one thing that leaps out of all the brain literature, it is that, as Daniel J. Siegel puts it, ''emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain.'' Kids learn from people they love. If we want young people to develop the social and self-regulating skills they need to thrive, we need to establish stable long-term relationships between love-hungry children and love-providing adults.  That's why I'm grappling with these books on psychology and brain function. I started out on this wonk odyssey in the company of economic data, but the closer you get to the core issue, the further you venture into the primitive realm of love.” (25/5/06)

Economics is no longer the queen of the social sciences: “At home, we spend more money on education than any other nation. We have undertaken a million experiments to restructure schools and bureaucracies. But students who lack cultural and social capital because they did not come from intact, organized families continue to fall further and further behind -- unless they come into contact with some great mentor who can not only teach, but also change values and behavior. It all amounts to this: Events have forced different questions on us. If the big contest of the 20th century was between planned and free market economies, the big questions of the next century will be understanding how cultures change and can be changed, how social and cultural capital can be nurtured and developed, how destructive cultural conflict can be turned to healthy cultural competition.” (19/2/06)

Social progress is possible: “The first thing that has happened is that people have stopped believing in stupid ideas: that the traditional family is obsolete, that drugs are liberating, that it is every adolescent's social duty to be a rebel.  The second thing that has happened is that many Americans have become better parents. Time diary studies reveal that parents now spend more time actively engaged with kids, even though both parents are more likely to work outside the home.  Third, many people in the younger generation, under age 30 or so, are reacting against the culture of divorce. They are trying to lead lives that are more stable than the ones their parents led. Post-boomers behave better than the baby boomers did.  Fourth, over the past few decades, neighborhood and charitable groups have emerged to help people lead more organized lives, even in the absence of cohesive families.” (7/8/06)

Comments

[Dave Bartlett]

I don't know that I'd recommend Mr Brooks as an advisor for David Cameron, but he's a regular 'talking head' on an american equivalent of "The Week in Westminster", PBS Newshour's Weekly Political Wrap, that I'd recommend to anyone :-)

[Ken Stevens]

Anyone needing a guru is not a leader.

Ken Stevens

(Still keeping an eye on this site, fruitlessly looking for a reason to return to voting Tory.

Cameron: "Tories halfway to victory"
Billy Fury [which dates me somewhat!]:
"Don't leave me halfway to paradise, so near yet so far away"

So who do I vote for?
Labour: On yer bike!
Tory: .. and the difference is what, precisely?
Lib/Dem: an irrelevance
UKIP: pressing the self-destruct button?
English Democrats: I joined, though of course not in any expectation that they could aspire to power in my lifetime.

Shall therefore spoil ballot paper or vote for someone loony, as a futile gesture, thereby doubling his/her vote.)

[thatcherite]

Get real! Cameron's gurus are Michael Heseltine, Chris Patten and John Gummer. The wets in the Tory Reform Group and Bow Group dominate shortlists for the best seats.

[Richard Carey]

The wets in the Tory Reform Group and Bow Group dominate shortlists for the best seats.

Everytime someone starts talking about Tory Wets on here I have to check my calendar again and make sure I'm still in the right century. Somebody will start braying "sound, sound" in the back row next!...

Still keeping an eye on this site, fruitlessly looking for a reason to return to voting Tory.

I'm sorry that you haven't seen that reason so far, Ken. The difference is (just off the top of my head) a commitment to reform public services and make them accountable through a genuine localism, a belief that people-sized institutions serve you better than a monolithic state, and that the proceeds of economic growth should be shared over time so that you keep more of your hard-earned money.

That's just a few things that come to mind - if it's not enough, I hope we can offer you more, but I'd fill up the thread if I kept going!

[malcolm]

I've asked you for evidence of this assertion before 'thatcherite' and you gave us one name .Can you do any better now and list all the wets that Cameron has thrust on poor unwilling constituency associations?

[Opinicus]

@Richard Carey
A commitment to reform public services - How?
Genuine localism - Which?
A belief in genuine localism - Made incarnate in what?
Proceeds of economic growth shared - The more we share the more we keep, very Orwellian.

This isn't a list of reasons to vote Conservative, it is mood music. Tony Blair and even Ming could drop these into any speech they made.

[Ken Stevens]

Richard Carey
Many thanks for response. You may recall my previous visit to the site where you also responded. I look at this site most days, as I genuinely want to vote Tory but am not prepared to do so just to get a product virtually indistinguishable from the present Brand X. There have been various instances where I would have liked to comment but recognize that I mustn't intrude unduly in this club.

As to this specific topic, I have no problem if the "gurus" are politicians rather than spinmeisters. Whether or not I like Tory wets, drys or just-nicely-moists is irrelevant to the principle that it is the political prominentes themselves who should be possessed of the big ideas, using advisers etc simply to flesh out the details within those concepts. Otherwise they don't merit being in senior political positions. It is legitimate to be on the board of a commercial company and employing staff to scout round for good product ideas that might attract the customers. However, with a political party, I expect the board itself to be the ideas people.

[Matt Wright]

Oh come on, in some way or other we all have gurus. People that we look upto or seek advice from. For Christs sake we tend to see Thatcher as a great leader (and she was) but she also had gurus.

I am a Tory through and through but I see in the "social responsibility" approach of Cameron not only a real solution for the issues that the country must tackle but also a deeply Conservative agenda.

He hasn't added a lot of detail. Well actually that may be a good thing as he if he was to there is no doubt Labour would nick it and screw it up.

Matt

[Richard Carey]

Ken,

There have been various instances where I would have liked to comment but recognize that I mustn't intrude unduly in this club.

I hope that you continue to read and indeed keep posting more. You're not intruding in a "club" - the Conservative Party for a start mustn't be a narrow club, and one of this blog's aims (as it's owned by an independent editor) is to go far wider than just the Party.

(Note: you may occasionally see me bashing opposition supporters over the metaphorical head on here, but don't let that put you off!)

Please keep throwing your views into the debate when you feel you've a point to make, you might find it's good for all of us.