Is Patio Man a Neo-Hooverite?

I found today’s David Brooks column extremely confusing on a number of levels. For one thing, I’m unclear on who “Patio Man” is since patios or patio-like spaces are an extremely common feature of the American landscape — existing in rural areas, suburbs of all kinds, but also many urban neighborhoods. Brooks says that he “is the quintessential suburban American, the service economy worker, the guy who wears khakis to work each day, with the security badge on the belt clip around his waist” and also that he “lives in northern Virginia, along the I-4 corridor near Orlando, Fla., in or near Columbus, Ohio, along the Front Range of Colorado, in the converging megalopolis between Albuquerque and Santa Fe and in many other places.” Demographically, those places don’t have a great deal in common — northern Virginia much wealthier than Columbus, etc.

But the basic idea seems to be that Patio Man is a white male suburbanite. Then Brooks says:

In times of turmoil, he has gravitated toward the party that could restore his sense of order. In the 1970s, crime and social breakdown seemed like the biggest threats to order, and he gravitated to the G.O.P. In the late 1990s, Republican revolutionaries seemed to bring instability, and he softened on Clinton. Then terrorism threatened his equilibrium and he helped re-elect Bush. Then, post-Iraq and post-Katrina, administrative incompetence led him a bit the other way.

It’s probably true that white male suburbanites shifted to some extent throughout all these events, but at the same time one has to keep in mind that white male suburbanites are just much more conservative than are non-white males or white males who live in big cities or white women. Bill Clinton won the 1996 election pretty handily, but Dole won white men by a very safe 49-38 margin. In that context, it’s hard to know how we’re supposed to think about this:

Patio Man wants change. But this is no time for more risk or more debt. Debt in the future is no solution to the debt racked up in the past. This is a back-to-basics moment, a return to safety and the fundamentals.

Patio Man, in other words, would prefer it if President Obama come into office in 2009 and govern in a relatively conservative manner. But this is just another way of observing that Patio man is a conservative. Most likely, Obama will win the election. But I’m absolutely positive that most white male suburbanites will vote for John McCain. And if Obama becomes President, most white male suburbanites won’t approve of his job performance. And most white male suburbanites definitely won’t vote for his re-election. But by the same token, non-whites definitely will vote for Obama in 2008 and if he wins they’ll do it again in 2012.

Meanwhile, the real point here seems to be that Brooks thinks it would be a mistake for the federal government to take on additional debt. But Brooks is wrong. You don’t need to take my word for it, or even listen to Brooks’ colleague the Nobel Prize winning economist — everyone from Ben Bernanke to Maya MacGuinneas is rejecting neo-Hooverism. As for the public at large, I seriously doubt that most people have a considered opinion on the merits of Keynesian stimulus. What I do know is that the electorate as a whole will react very poorly to the United States falling into a severe, years-long economic slump while they’ll reward a reasonably hasty turnaround. Smart politicians are going to do what it takes to avoid a severe slump and trust the public to judge them based on results.