The thing you have to remember when wondering about how David Brooks

will fare at the NY Times is that the new head of the op-ed page is

David Shipley. From his resume, he looks like the ideal Times

apparachik–Clinton speechwriter, married to feminist writer Naomi

Wolf, etc., etc. Except that David, once upon a time, was an assistant

to Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, and in the course of that tour of

duty did the line-by-line editing for a couple of my books, including

In Pursuit. I came to realize that he is just a wonderful guy: smart,

thoughtful, fairminded, and as thoroughly pleasant a companion as a

person can be. And with a backbone. He will not put an iota of pressure

on Brooks to tone down anything, because, mirabile dictu, David Shipley

actually wants intelligent conservative opinion on the Times op ed

page. Of course, how long David Shipley will last is another

question….