In the spotlight: David Brooks shares his dream of a conservative Oberlin with students last night in Finney Chapel.

“I dream of the day when Oberlin is a conservative college,” said New York Times columnist David Brooks in his convocation address last night at Finney Chapel.

Judging from reactions during the question and answer session following the speech, his audience was less convinced by that sentiment. But Brooks’ blend of pop-sociology and moderate conservatism seem to have become somewhat of an Oberlin fixture. This is Brooks’ second speech this year at Oberlin; he previously spoke at West Lecture Hall in March.

“I’ve been told that if I come back for a third time they’ll give me tenure,” he quipped.

Brooks began his speech by giving a political autobiography in which he tried to explain the origins of his conservatism, the same ground he covered in his speech in March.

Born into a liberal household in New York’s Greenwich Village, Brooks’ early days were filled with many of the familiar trappings and stereotypes of left-wing intelligentsia.

As a young socialist at the University of Chicago, Brooks attracted the attention of neo-conservative patriarch William F. Buckley, who he parodied in a student publication.

Brooks’ gradual slide across the political spectrum began when he was a reporter on Chicago’s south side. He came to believe that the social problems he encountered at his job were less the result of systemic inequality and more the result of how people lived their lives.

“Social policies at that time took power away from the decent people in the community,” he said. “Social policy should be geared towards helping people get some order in their lives.”

Brooks’ conversion to conservatism continued during the Reagan 80s when he was covering the Soviet Union.

“Communism was an evil empire,” he said. “Reagan called America the greatest force for good in the world and I couldn’t understand why it was socially polite to recoil from that among my liberal friends.”

Brooks also returned to one of the recurring themes in his columns and books, the “smug and snobbish” condescension that he perceives most liberals having towards middle America.

In the second part of his speech he articulated a new vision for the Republican Party, a vision where the goal is not merely reducing government as it was during the Republican revolution of the 1990s but establishing a “limited energetic government.”

“How can you love your country and hate its government?” he asked.

Brooks felt that President Bush’s agenda was moving the party in the right direction.

“He’s not his father’s kind of Republican,” he said. “He has transformed the Republican party.”

Brooks attributed this transformation to Bush’s ability to connect with middle-class voters, what he portrayed as the president’s un-Republican belief in big government and his “ideological foreign policy.”

Brooks still had qualms about the current administrations.

“In the realm of abstractions I think he’s a great president,” he said. “In reality I have some problems. He seems to possess mysterious and powerful political skills but is stuck in corporate cronyism.”

Brooks believes that that there are really three parties in American politics. One liberal, one conservative and one consisting of people like John McCain, Joe Biden, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Lieberman.

Brooks ultimately feels that personal beliefs are less critical to most Americans than social identity.

“People pick a side and then adjust their personal beliefs so they are in line with that side,” he said. “The clash of ideas has given way to the clash of teams.”