David Brooks’ About-Face on Mitt Romney

With a New York Times op-ed entitled, “Thurston Howell Romney,” David Brooks takes the Republican presidential nominee to task by casting him as the affable, out of touch millionaire character from 1960s Americana. But that is not the tune Brooks was singing coming out of the Republican National Convention. On the day after Romney gave his acceptance speech, Brooks had this to say on his weekly Newshour appearance on PBS: “I think it’s hard to portray him as an unfeeling, corporate rich guy. He had a sort of Richie Rich image that came out of a lot of the ads run against him. And I do think he has overcome that to a significant degree.” (August 31, 2012)