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I heartily agreed with David Brooks earlier this month, when at the end of an op-ed about public dignity, he praised the President for exemplifying “reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity.” The President has the well-deserved reputation for being the coolest-headed (and plain coolest) guy in the room, and usually conducts himself with a kind of sobriety and reserve that is in short supply in American politics.

But there’s an exception to this, and a huge one, that Brooks misses completely: those times when, as with the lead-up to the passage of the stimulus bill, Obama takes to the stump and revives his “perpetual campaign“, traveling to a series of town halls and rallies, rolling up his sleeves, loosening his tie, and essentially mortgaging his personal popularity for support on key policy issues.

He’s doing it …

With plenty of arm-twisting from Rahm Emanuel’s White House and the House’s Democratic leadership, a weak, and probably counterproductive Cap-and-Trade Bill is on its way to the Senate (where I betcha it will fail unless it is watered-down even further).

In the Obama administration’s and Congressional Democrats’ willingness to pass some bill, any bill, David Brooks sees bad juju for the future of Health Care reform:
“[T]he Clintoncare collapse and the ensuing decade in the wilderness drove home the costs of failure [for Democrats]. This has produced a Vince Lombardi attitude toward winning. There are limits, of course, but leaders in Congress and in the administration seem open to nearly any idea so long as it will lead to passing legislation. On health care, the administration would like a strong public plan, but it is evidently open to a weak one. …

While I was busy scooping the rest of the blogosphere with my precision commentary on the quasi-State of the Union address, I seem to have wildly missed the consensus on Bobby Jindal’s Republican response.

My first take was that Jindal delivered a competent back-to-basics conservative rejoinder to President Obama. Sure, his delivery was a little aw-shucks woody (Greg Veis at The Plank compared him to Kenneth from 30 Rock, and CJR rounds up a few other choice descriptors here). But as Veis goes on to say in the same post, the deck is always stacked against SOTU rebuttals:
“You arrive onscreen directly after the president, and the optics are terrible. Instead of addressing a joint session, you’re hanging out by yourself a room fit for a Bing Crosby Christmas special. Also, you’re consigned from the get-go into a …

Barack Obama joined a cadre of conservative commentators for a meal of lamb chops at the Chevy Chase, MD home of George F. Will. Also in attendance were David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan and William Kristol.

I’m sure that some other industrious little blogger out there came up with the above headline to describe Barack Obama’s dinner last night with conservative pundits, but surprisingly none of the big boys did. Here’s what they were talking about:

Chicago Sun-Times Washington Columnist Lynn Sweet offered an early blow-by-blow stakeout of the event, having done everything but wiretap George Will’s house: 
“The PEOTUS departed Hay-Adams at 6:17 p.m. and at arrived at 6:34 p.m. at No. 9 
Grafton St., Chevy Chase (right off the circle). Thanks to the good work of Hans 
Nichols (of Bloomberg and “Daily Show” fame), Montgomery County property tax 
records showed this is …

What is it David Brooks called Palin? Oh, right, a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.

Looks like McCain’s aides–and probably McCain himself–felt pretty much the same way, as campaign officials go public with the rift between the Senator and the Governor. Highlights:

Fox News reports that Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent and did not know the member nations of the North American Free Trade Agreement — the United States, Mexico and Canada — when she was picked for vice president.

The New York Times reports that McCain aides were outraged when Palin staffers scheduled her to speak with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, a conversation that turned out to be a radio station prank.

Newsweek reports that Palin spent far more than the previously reported $150,000 on …

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