Frank Bruni: Bret, I need to broach a delicate topic, and I want you to dispense with any courtesy — channel President Trump — and answer candidly, because there’s an important reason behind my question: Do you think Democrats are ugly?
Bret Stephens: Only when wearing patchouli-scented fragrances, Frank. Why on earth are you asking me that?
Frank: Well, in The Bulwark recently, Lauren Egan wrote a column about the belief among some Democrats that their defeats in 2024 and their difficulties attracting voters have to do with a “hotness deficit” in their candidates. It drew my attention for two reasons. One, are there no limits to the Democratic Party’s self-flagellation and capacity for overthinking things? Two, um, is there rampant hotness in the Republican ranks?
Bret: If 2024 had been decided on looks, I rather doubt Donald Trump would be back in the White House. The real deficit Democrats faced in 2024 comes down to ideology and competence. Voters look at blue cities like Chicago and blue states like California and they don’t see well-run places. Voters also listen to Democrats on hot-button issues like biological males in women’s sports and they think liberals have gone mad. Fix those things, and Democrats will be able to party like it’s 1999, to coin a phrase.
And, let me ask you, is there rampant hotness among Republicans?
Frank: That’s what I asked you, but you had to be all high-minded and substantive.
Fine. I’ll take on the question, and I’ll answer it this way: President Trump has merchandised just about everything related to his political life and his White House that can be merchandised, and yet there has been no Men of the Trump Administration calendar, has there? That’s because he’d come up well, well shy of 12 months. I suspect Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was gravely disappointed. He was shirtless, hair-gelled and ready to be January.
Bret: Just like Vladimir Putin. There’s a vibe there that, aah — let’s change the subject.
Frank: As for Democratic insanity, it may be less and less relevant. Republican insanity, thanks to Trump, has left it in the dust.
Bret: True, which is a big reason Democrats should do well in the midterms. Then again, I’m heading for an airport today, and if the line is four hours long I won’t be alone in cursing congressional Democrats who blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security for the sake of trying to force reforms on ICE.
Frank: It’s not like Democrats have no justification; from where I sit — and from where the loved ones of many Americans brutalized or killed by federal agents sit — reforming ICE is an absolute necessity.
Bret: Sure. Just don’t ask regular Americans to spend hours in line as hostages to your political battles.
Frank: Republicans are doing some of that asking, too, Bret, with their own intransigence — and with the abusive, lawless behavior that brought us here. Besides which, Democrats right now have little leverage other than the power of the congressional purse. Grant them that.
As for the midterms, they indeed should be a Democratic romp, given that the price of a gallon of gas in some places is up a dollar since this war started, given that a majority of Americans don’t support the war or understand why we’re waging it, and given the accurate sense they get that this is an administration of grifters who regard government posts as part A.T.M., part amusement park — a vanity fair, if you will.
But I emphasized that “should” because I also believe that Trump and his lackeys will do whatever they can to foil voters’ wishes and subvert the democratic process. We don’t yet know what that looks like or how disruptive and destructive it will be.
Bret: Well, we have the president last month calling on the federal government to “take over” state elections, which terrifies me as a conservative both because I believe (on federalist grounds) that states should run their own elections and because I also believe (on precautionary grounds) that if a Republican administration can try to tinker with elections in blue states, a Democratic administration will eventually try to tinker with elections in red states. And then we have the so-called SAVE America act, which supposedly stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility and imposes onerous requirements to prove citizenship that many voters would struggle to meet.
A more accurate name would be “Stymie Citizens’ Rights, Elect Wackos” America Act. I’ll refrain from spelling out the acronym.
Frank: The electing wackos part of the project is well underway and has had remarkable success. Capitol Hill at this point is like some national Strategic Wacko Reserve. Speaking of strategy and wackos, did you catch Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claim that Trump was “jiujitsuing” Iran by lifting some sanctions against it — which could benefit Iran by more than $10 billion — while simultaneously bombing the bejesus out of the country? I ask you, Bret, does service in top Trump administration jobs just liquefy the human brain?
Bret: Mmmm. I think Bessent, who’s one of the sharper knives in the Trump cabinet, is right about this.
Frank: I think sycophancy dulls even the keenest blade, and I think “in the Trump cabinet” is a qualifier so forgiving it renders the previous words meaningless. It’s like saying I’m the hottest Democrat in my home. As you know, I live alone.
Bret: Regan, your pooch, is the hottest Democrat in your home, Frank!
What Bessent is trying to do is deprive Tehran of its oil weapon, the one it was trying to yield when it effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz as a means of jacking up global energy prices to put political pressure on Trump to end the war. There are about 140 million barrels of Iranian oil now at sea, and temporarily lifting sanctions means it can go to an ally like Japan that currently is among the most affected by the disruption in the flow of fuel. It’s also questionable whether Iran can even get paid for the oil. The sanctions should be reimposed by late April when, I hope, the war will be over.
Frank: That all sounds so Sisyphean and seat-of-the-pants to me. My brain hurts. I fear that thinking about Trump lo these many surreal years has liquefied it. And Bessent’s supposedly black-belt jiujitsuing doesn’t change the fact that Trump and many of his aides were surprised and flummoxed by the strait’s closing when they shouldn’t have been.
Bret: No, they shouldn’t have. Then again, for Iran to try to close the strait is a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your own face. Ultimately, Tehran is going to pay a steep price for trying to block an international waterway.
Frank: I must pay you a compliment — you wrote a very impressive column this week about ways in which this war is going well. You brought in a bevy of historical examples, underscoring how often we journalists forget history. But not a word of your piece gave me any reassurance that we’re in safe hands with Trump and Hegseth, and please don’t tell me Secretary of State Marco Rubio will compensate. Don’t you go and jujitsu me like that.
Bret: Hey, I’m glad Rubio wields as much influence in the administration as he does when it comes to foreign policy. Face it, so are you. Better him than JD Vance.
Frank: “Better him than JD Vance” is meager consolation. An infinity of hims apply.
Bret: I understand why people are terrified about the idea of going to war with these guys at the helm. To listen to Trump is to experience a degree of policy schizophrenia that, in a different context, would land you in Bellevue. But the people I have full confidence in are Gen. Dan Caine and Adm. Brad Cooper and the men and women who fight under them. And I continue to think they are going to accomplish the military mission in three or four weeks — assuming the White House has the wisdom to stay out of the way.
Which, I grant, is a big “if.”
Frank: We’re in Week 4. So, to be clear, you mean another four weeks?
Bret: Another three or four, yes. I don’t think this will stretch to more than two months, total. Remember, the “lighting fast” Gulf War in 1991 lasted six weeks.
Frank: I remember. You reminded me in that column!
Bret: You were there!
Frank: Indeed, for the whole of it, first in Saudi Arabia and then embedded with the Third Armored Cavalry in Iraq. But there’s another lesson of those military excursions past: The official end of the fighting is by no means the end of the problem. There’s what’s left behind: the disorder, sometimes verging on chaos; the devastation, often plunging a nation’s already beleaguered people into greater despair; power vacuums or at least scrambled power dynamics that may prove more dangerous than what preceded them. How carefully do you believe that the likes of Trump and Hegseth have considered all of that?
Bret: I think they’re trying to avoid the biggest mistake of Iraq, which was the attempt to design a foreign policy about making dreams come true — democracy in the Middle East! — as opposed to a foreign policy about keeping nightmares at bay — the biggest nightmare being Iran with nuclear weapons. That’s why you don’t hear me mocking them as I often do; because I think they’re doing the right thing, if not always in the right way.
Frank: Because I am indeed mocking them somewhat — I plead guilty — I should make clear that I’m also rooting for them. Do I want a different president and administration? Yes. Very much. Do I want this president and this administration to fail in Iran, by which I mean lose American lives, spend American treasure and inflict mass casualties without much benefit? No, because too many people here, there and elsewhere will be gravely hurt by that. Perhaps I speak for many Trump opponents in that regard; we’re struggling not to let crucial skepticism bleed into defeatism and we want to signal our hopes for success without becoming gullible cheerleaders. It’s a process.
How about you help us through it by pointing us toward something inspirational that you’ve seen, done or read lately?
Bret: Frank, was there a greater artist in the 20th century than Matisse? Anyone who could create more magic in a single line? Our art critic Emily LaBarge wrote a fabulous review of a new Matisse exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris featuring his very late work, when he was debilitated from complications during surgery for intestinal cancer and the Nazis were coming after his wife and daughter. Money quote: The show “challenges the conventional understanding of any artist’s ‘late’ years as an inevitable tapering off. Here, we see a blossoming, a relentless drive to experiment in new mediums and a radical simplicity that only a lifetime of making could achieve.”
Puts me in mind of a phrase, Frank: “The beauty of dusk.”
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