Obama's Kind of Republican: David Brooks

New York reports on David Brooks of the NYT:

The Chicago connection helps. He’s known Emanuel since his congressional days. Brooks’s admiration for David Axelrod dates back to when Brooks was at the University of Chicago and Axelrod was a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. “He was my hero,” Brooks says.

Brooks first met Obama in 2005, when Obama was a freshman senator. He was impressed by Obama’s command of political philosophy, not to mention his tailoring. When Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope came out in 2006, Brooks praised it in his column and urged Obama to run for president.

Since then, Obama’s team has courted Brooks assiduously. Emanuel once arranged for Obama to swing by a meeting he and Axelrod were having with Brooks.

Imagine that.