"My momma loves me. She loves me..."

The First Lady stands by her man:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- First lady Michelle Obama says President Barack Obama ''has done a phenomenal job,'' but that people have a right to criticize him.

The first lady added that he understands people are still suffering amid high unemployment. She also said, "Every day our president wakes up serious and focused and committed to pushing this stuff through. We had hoped that more progress would have been made."

Try the prunes, Mr. President?

Two NYT columnists today -- Brooks and Herbert -- come at the President's performance from different angles: Brooks from above, with his eyeglasses, soft clean hands, and educated gentility; and Herbert, who consistently writes free of sentiment and with a clear-eyed focus that doesn't play victims, who understands how economics and ethics trump liberal big-government reforms that can kill families.

Brooks is white, Herbert black but it's not so easy as picking sides like that.

Herbert writes about people, real Americans dealing with reality across the economic plains, who have no hope of being plucked out of the masses and elevated in some social program engineered to right the wrongs of the past by picking winners out of the sociology stew -- the "second mouse" who benefits from his predecessors' struggles and sufferings. ("The early bird gets the worm. The second mouse gets the cheese.")

Brooks ... well, it still looks pretty and all from his vantage-point. Liberals of all colors and ethnicities, banking on the dreams of their childrens' success. Education as the great uplifter, even for working-class whites competing harder with less against the affirmative action subsidies and redistribution plans that call for feeding children lunch and breakfast, and insuring unplanned children and families on the public dime. (taken from the paycheck of the man still working, whose wife stays home to cook and feed her family, because it makes sense economically.)

The problem with elite educations isn't what you learn; it's what you don't. What assumptions are never challenged, what you miss out on isolated from the workings of the Real World. The School of Hard Knocks doesn't give you a fancy parchment at the end, and there's no grand ceremoney, but it is what it is. The inherent value of an education should be what you take with you to get the job done, what keen eyes observe and process about human nature learned in years of study.

Back to the sports world again:
If a player came up through the farm leagues and could pitch regularly and reliably, would you value that player more than one who was awarded scholarships for his promise, was signed to write books about his experience before he even got onto a playing field, heck was named series MVP even before any games were played?

Superstars are fine and all, but in the sports world, you don't see too many superstars kept around for many seasons without producing. Despite the hype, at some point, you have to bring your game.

Brooks:

This is a fraught political climate. Liberals are furious. Moderates are running for their lives. Republicans believe, with much evidence, that an unprecedented wave of public rage is breaking across the land, directed at Washington. The uninformed float rumors that Rahm Emanuel is on the outs.

Yet the atmosphere in the White House appears surprisingly tranquil. Emanuel is serving as a lighting rod for the president but remains crisply confident in his role as chief of staff. It’s true that several top administration officials did not want to attempt comprehensive health care reform this year. But they are not opening recrimination campaigns. It’s no secret that many think the president needs to be more assertive with Congress, yet administration officials still talk about Obama in awestruck tones, even in private.

Some would say the administration is underreacting to the incredible shift in the public mood. Some would say they need more voices from the great unwashed. But no one could accuse them of panicking, or of scrambling about incoherently. In their first winter of discontent, they are offering continuity and comity. Whatever their relations with the country might be, inside they seem unruffled. The bonds of association, from the top down, seem healthy — especially for a bunch of Democrats.

Herbert:

What you’re not hearing from the politicians and the talking heads is that the joblessness and underemployment in America’s low-income households rival their heights in the Great Depression of the 1930s — and in some instances are worse. The same holds true for some categories of blue-collar workers. Anyone who thinks this devastating problem is going away soon, or that the economy can be put back on track without addressing it, is deluded.
...
The point here is that those in the lower-income groups are in a much, much deeper hole than the general commentary on the recession would lead people to believe. And none of the policy prescriptions being offered by the administration or the leaders of either party in Congress would in any way substantially alleviate the plight of those groups.

We talk about the recession as if all of its victims were suffering equally, and all will be helped by some bland, class-and-category-neutral solution.

That is so wrong. As the Center for Labor Market Studies explained in its report: “A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom two deciles of the income distribution; a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top.”

Those who believe this grievous economic situation will right itself of its own accord or can be corrected without bold, targeted (and, yes, expensive) government action are still reading from the Ronald Reagan (someday it will trickle down) hymnal.

I bet at the NYT Brooks makes more than Herbert, but honestly whose words today are more on the money and have greater worth? (Check back in time, if you're like the President's First Lady and still have hope for a wonderful victory despite what's continually being written on the scorecard.)

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ADDED: Political science professor Gerard Alexander, of the University of Virginia, wrote in Sunday's Washington Post:

Starting in the 1960s, the original neoconservative critics such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed distress about the breakdown of inner-city families, only to be maligned as racist and ignored for decades -- until appalling statistics forced critics to recognize their views as relevant. Long-standing conservative concerns over the perils of long-term welfare dependency were similarly villainized as insincere and mean-spirited -- until public opinion insisted they be addressed by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress in the 1996 welfare reform law. But in the meantime, welfare policies that discouraged work, marriage and the development of skills remained in place, with devastating effects.

Ignoring conservative cautions and insights is no less costly today. Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bush's aw-shucks style, Sarah Palin's college-hopping and the occasional conservative campaigns against egghead intellectuals. But alongside that, the fact is that conservative-leaning scholars, economists, jurists and legal theorists have never produced as much detailed analysis and commentary on American life and policy as they do today.

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras. Of course, thinking twice would be easier if more of them were listening to conservatives at all.

Monday, Alexander delivered the American Enterprise Institute's Bradley Lecture, "Do Liberals Know Best? Intellectual Self-Confidence and the Claim to a Monopoly on Knowledge."