David Brooks on CIA Tapes, Goldman Sachs Charges and the Florida GOP

Columnist David Brooks — one half of our regular Shields and Brooks analysis team — stopped by The Rundown Friday for a conversation about the latest headlines, including the Security and Exchange Commission filing fraud charges against financial firm Goldman Sachs.

Brooks said Goldman Sachs was once considered royalty on Wall Street and Washington — the firm has many former employees who went onto powerful posts in the federal government, like former Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin.

“I used to think we might as well hand the government over the Goldman Sachs,” Brooks said.

Watch the full discussion:

The firm survived the 2008 financial crisis that brought down other Wall Street giants. Brooks predicted that pending legislation designed to prevent wrongdoing and dangerous risk in the financial industry would clear the U.S. Senate.

Brooks also spoke with us about the anger and frustration directed at Florida Gov. Charlie Crist over a controversial education bill as well as what he calls the untold story of why the Bush administration decided to stop waterboarding detainees as part of the war on terror. Internal CIA documents released Friday suggest that CIA officers may have lied about permission to destroy videos of CIA officers waterboarding detainees.

We’ll have a one-on-one with Mark Shields next week.