Advice for Obama: Don't Take Any Advice

As Barack Obama arrives in Denver, the once-buoyant candidate is being assailed with bad advice from all sides, writes David Brooks. From a Dukakis-style policy blitz to Michael Moore-ish pugilism, the suggestions for Obama's team are a "Greatest Misses compilation" of past failures. Obama knows what he should do, says the New York Times columnist: push on, stay authentic, and tune out "the phantasmagorical vapors of his own party."

Obama has been here before: this time last year, he was stuck in the polls while the Hillary juggernaut seemed unstoppable. Back then he got the same bad advice—but "in the crowning moment of his whole race, Obama shut them out." He has to do that again, Brooks writes: leave behind the culture wars, the populism, and the Bush-bashing, and make the "arguments that reinforce Obama’s identity as a 21st-century man." (More Barack Obama stories.)