Moderate conservative columnist David Brooks, a man I still hold in high regards, has – liberal writer Ezra Klein argues – become the White House’s favorite columnist. He explains:

This is a bit of an inside baseball observation, but it’s becoming clear that the columnist with the best access to the White House is, improbably, David Brooks. A month ago, Brooks got the first word on the banking plan and a rare one-on-one interview with Tim Geithner. His take on the proposal proved much more positive than that of the broader media. A week ago, a critical column Brooks wrote on the budget resulted in a sustained defense of the administration’s plans from “four senior members of the administration.” The resulting op-ed faithfully reproduced their argument. Today, Brooks follows Obama’s big education speech with a column that lays out the administration’s education thinking in some detail and is anchored by an exclusive interview with Arne Duncan. Like the column on Geithner, it’s also notably positive (though unlike the banking plan, Obama’s education plan has met with a broadly admiring reception, so Brooks is with, at least, the left-of-center consensus here). I can’t think of any other columnist with this kind of access.In itself, that’s not abnormal. Administrations often choose themselves a favored columnist to bless with access and exclusives. But this is the first time, to my knowledge, that a White House has chosen a columnist of the opposite party to serve in that role.

The reason, I think, is simple: the White House understands that ‘moderate’ voters are key to winning elections. You have to court them, if you want to keep on winning.

And that’s what Obama et alia are doing now. They aren’t courting moderates by implementing moderate, pragmatic policy plans (the opposite even), but by talking to them and by giving them news and access others don’t have. This leads them to conclude that they are somehow ‘involved’ and that their views are appreciated and that something is done with them… which isn’t correct, of course. They’re merely a tool to win elections, nothing more, nothing less.

It’s sad that Brooks falls for this strategy. One would expect an experienced columnist to see right through the above, and to use it to his advantage and to that of his readers.