New York Times Hires Ross Douthat

This is the obligatory* Ross-Douthat-at-the-New-York-Times post.

The newspaper's announcement is here, via Memeorandum, where there's a lot of commentary on the news.

I first want to wish Douthat congratulations. I've been familiar with his work since the publication of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. The Atlantic piece based on the book, "The Truth About Harvard," is must reading for those in college teaching. His appointment to the Times at (roughly) the age of 30 is one of the most astounding stories of journalistic accomplishment in the high-tech media age.

I'm also currently wading through Douthat's more recent book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. The book, and Douthat's analytical repertoire, is wonky conservative pragmatism. My feeling is that Douthat's frankly just a lot-smarter-version of David Brooks, so while the Times' editorial page will have a new towering intellect, they won't have a Buckley-esque voice at the op-eds (although thank God they didn't hire Daniel Larison).

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*Allahpundit's traffic-churning posts are almost always entitled "obligatory."