Gail Collins: Bret, I really want to talk with you about the presidential debate and, um, regular politics, but first — attempted assassination.
Bret Stephens: This is definitely the wrong kind of “déjà vu all over again,” to borrow a phrase.
Gail: So depressed that we live in a world in which “but first — attempted assassination” is not really a surprise opening. Story for me is mostly about our dreaded gun culture, but let me open it up for you.
Bret: Obviously, we are both relieved that the former president is unharmed: Elections must never be settled with bullets. As for the attack itself, we’ll be learning a lot more about the suspect pretty soon, but my initial reaction is that this may well be another case of what Philip Roth called the “indigenous American berserk” — the lost souls, like Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme or John Hinckley Jr., who hunger for fame and imagine infamy is close enough.
Gail: Totally agree, although keeping those folks from buying and owning guns would be an excellent plan, a simple way of letting the berserk be a little less … berserk.
Here’s hoping this is the end of it.
But back to the presidential debate. Tell me you watched it and decided, finally, that you’re voting for Kamala Harris.
Bret: Uh, no.
Gail: What? What? I’m expressing shock, since the entire world agrees she did a good job while Donald Trump revealed himself as just a reality TV star who thinks Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Ohio.
Bret: No doubt she won the debate handily — in part by baiting Trump into being his usual buffoonish self. But I don’t think she made a particularly strong case for a Harris presidency.
Gail: She isn’t in tune with all your principles, but isn’t the prime directive less about an economic agenda than keeping the country sane?
Bret: Let me lay out my state of mind, so readers can understand how it stands with uncertain voters like me.
If Trump wins the election, I’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, I’ll feel scared. A Trump victory is going to complete the G.O.P.’s transition to a full-blown MAGA party that trades conservative convictions for illiberal ones. A Harris victory puts an untested leader in the White House at a moment of real menace from ambitious autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran. A Trump victory means the country is again going to go crazy with all the cultural furies he unleashes, both for and against him. A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies, like the threat to put controls on prices some federal bureaucrat deems to be too high. A Trump victory is dreadful for Ukraine. A Harris victory could be terrible for Israel. A Trump victory empowers people who don’t accept the results of an election. A Harris victory empowers a candidate who has never won a primary and whose supporters want to jail their political opponent.
Gail: And in conclusion?
Bret: Sorry to be verbose. Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.
Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction. Maybe you could create a I-Hate-Harris-But-At-Least-She’s-Sane movement.
Bret: Just so you know: I absolutely do not hate Harris. She exudes warmth. And disagreement isn’t hatred.
Gail: I reserve the right to go back to harping on your voting plans. But in the meantime — Congress. The Republicans are going to have a tough time keeping the government going if they can’t find a reasonable way to pass at least a temporary spending package. Any suggestions for them?
Bret: The analogy that somehow comes to mind whenever I think of the House Republican caucus is the TV show “Shameless,” with William H. Macy. As best as I can recall, almost every character is a scheming, scamming, destructive and self-destructive loser. Which sounds a lot like the house of Gaetz, Greene & Co.
Let’s see if they can keep the government open for another few months. If they can’t, it will probably benefit Harris. But speaking of a different kind of shameless, Gail: How are you feeling about New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, these days?
Gail: Well gee, Bret, aside from the multiple federal investigations into corruption in his circle, the recent resignation of his police commissioner and a case of Covid, I’m sure Adams is having a great time.
Bret: Adams presented himself as the tough-on-crime candidate when he ran three years ago. Unfortunately, the only apparent criminality he wasn’t tough on was in his inner circle. There’s even a Wikipedia article devoted to the web of allegations.
Gail: This has certainly not been a stellar administration. But the thing I’ve been wondering about lately is: How come it’s so hard to get a good mayor in our great city? Think of how long it’s been since any New York mayor’s reputation stood the test of time — except Michael Bloomberg, I guess, who had the advantage of being a billionaire.
Bret: Bloomberg’s real advantage wasn’t his money; it was his businesslike and no-nonsense approach to governance. He appointed terrific deputies and never let ideology stand in the way of results. They should rename Central Park for him.
It probably also helped that he wasn’t a Democrat. Too many cities have a political ecosystem that stretches only from left to far left.
Gail: Perhaps that’s because the Republican Party isn’t capable of coming up with a vision of urban government that appeals to anybody but large property owners.
Bret: Hmmmmmm.
Gail: One example, just for the heck of it — Rudy Giuliani, who started out life as a law-and-order prosecutor and then molted into a Republican politician whose concerns for his own special interests helped make the disaster of 9-11 worse. And then he became … you know, the guy we see now selling his soul to anybody with more than a quarter.
Bret: What happened to Giuliani after he left City Hall is a putty of tragedy and disgrace. But he was also a wildly successful mayor who turned the city around after 30 years of decline. If you don’t believe me, just read this editorial endorsement of his re-election bid in 1997:
New Yorkers no longer apathetically assume that they have to put up with aggressive panhandlers, squeegee men or parks full of makeshift housing encampments. Most residents have an increased sense of control over their neighborhoods, and this is most critical in poorer sections of the city. Low-income Black and Latino families are no longer expected to reconcile themselves to gunfire in their streets and drug dealers on their doorsteps.
Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post? Nah, that was us. I can think of other great Republican mayors, like Richard Riordan, who helped turn around Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots. But your original question about why New York no longer produces good mayors seems to apply to politics more broadly. My question is, Why does America no longer seem to have any good politicians?
Gail: I don’t know if the quality is the issue. Our politicians seem inferior to generations past because the public gets so much of its information from a flood of random online commentaries. Sure, there was always political dialogue full of lies. But the real debates were between the candidates, not the cosmic web denizens, and fact-checked by newspapers and network television.
Bret: Not sure that’s right. Thanks to YouTube, you can now go back and watch politicians from two or three generations ago discuss the issues of the day: For instance, Ronald Reagan debating George H.W. Bush on the subject of immigration — which they both favored — during the 1980 G.O.P. primary campaign, or Richard Nixon debating John F. Kennedy on foreign policy, or listening to Robert F. Kennedy reciting Aeschylus from memory in his heartbreaking eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. They’re all Gullivers compared to today’s Lilliputians.
Gail: Maybe I’m too cynical. Maybe the saga of the Haitian immigrants eating cats for breakfast and dogs for lunch has set me off.
Bret: That story is typical of Trump: bigoted, inciting and false. Problem is, much of the mainstream news media ignores an underlying truth, which is that three years of largely unchecked migration under the Biden administration has brought real problems to the country, from an ultraviolent Venezuelan gang to severe strains on public services.
Of course, the even-larger truth is that immigration is great for America, provided it’s orderly and legal. It’s what brought some great Americans to our shores — including the parents of JD Vance’s wife, Usha.
Gail: I’ll refrain from a long whine about the bipartisan immigration reform program scotched by Republicans at the direction of Donald Trump.
OK, I guess I needed a need a short whine.
Bret: Only your finest whine — Châteauneuf-du-Kvetch. The problem with the argument about Trump squashing the immigration reform bill isn’t that it’s wrong. It’s that the Biden administration was able to get control of the border through an executive order that he could have issued three years earlier. This is not a winning argument for Harris.
A more winning argument for the vice president? That Trump hangs around disgusting, disreputable, crackpot conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer. If anything will clinch my vote for Harris, Carlson and Loomer may be it.
Gail: Loomer looms! Even if you wanted to dismiss her as a kooky hanger-on, you could not forgive Trump for inviting said kook, who believes the attack on the World Trade Center was an “inside job,” to the 9-11 memorial.
Bret: You’re right. It is absolutely unforgivable.
Gail: When I inevitably return to my plea that you promise to vote for Kamala Harris, I’ve got a new argument …
Bret: Does it involve Taylor Swift? Because that’s an argument that is decisive with at least one member of my family.
Gail: On one hand, you can make Taylor happy. Go for any other option, and you’re aligned with Laura Loomer. I’ll sleep sounder tonight, Bret, knowing I’ve got this wrapped.
But there’s always next week.
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