Queries for Biden and Trump; the road of the American Right; an evening without a phone; and more
Before a presidential debate, it is customary for opinion journalists to pose their own questions — questions that they would like to see asked at the debate, or would ask themselves. President Biden and Donald Trump are set to debate on Thursday night. Let me follow custom for a minute — by posing some questions of my own.
For Biden:
Many Americans regard our departure from Afghanistan as a debacle, and, worse, a shame: a national shame. How are they wrong?
Are you not responsible for some of the inflation in the country, given the federal spending on your watch?
In your judgment, are the national debt and the federal budget deficit a problem? If so, what have you done to address it?
Relatively few people think there should be no limits on abortion — even those who are generally “pro-choice.” You seem not to be among them. What limits should there be on abortion, if any? Do you think abortion is problematic, morally and legally? Have the unborn any rights at all?
In 2019, you called Mike Pence, then the vice president, a “decent guy.” When members of your own party — specifically, Cynthia Nixon — criticized you for this, you took the comment back. Are you sorry you did? What is your estimation of Mr. Pence now?
So, those are some questions for the incumbent. Here are some others for the challenger, Trump:
At one of your rallies in April, the people standing behind you chanted “Genocide Joe.” You said, “They’re not wrong.” You said it three times. Why are they not wrong?
Do you hope Ukraine wins the war? Do you hope the Ukrainians are able to repel the invader and keep their country?
Do you have any criticism to make of Vladimir Putin — any criticism at all?
You keep saying that immigrants “poison the blood of our country.” How so?
You call the January 6th defendants and convicts “hostages.” In what sense are they hostages?
• There will be only two candidates on the debate stage. But there are others in the race. Last weekend, Trump said, “Cornel West. He’s one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West. I also like her, Jill Stein. I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them. He takes 100 percent.”
That sounds right to me.
• As people note, our political alignments are interesting. This week, Cornel West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Marjorie Taylor Greene have been cheering for Julian Assange.
• A headline from Fox News reads, “Donald Trump has picked his running mate and they will be at Thursday’s debate.” (Article here.) Hmmm. That “they” doesn’t sound quite . . . Republican, does it?
• A review-essay by Joseph Stieb offers food for thought: here. Its title is “Responsible Conservatism Really Was a Thing for a While.” And its subtitle: “David Austin Walsh’s intellectual history of the American right is excellent but overstates Trumpism’s continuity with the conservatism that preceded it.”
On Saturday, I had a post about Trump, and character, and conservatism. Here are a couple of sentences from it:
In recent years, there has been a debate: Is Trumpism a continuation — even a culmination or consummation — of the conservative movement launched by Buckley and others, or is it a break from it? I believe it is a break, and a sharp one.
For a long while now, I have noticed something: When they are in a certain mood, Trump people say, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, you know. This is not your father’s Republican Party or conservative movement. There’s a new sheriff in town. It’s a new day and a new way. All that Reaganite baloney is over. Git on the Trump train or git crushed.” When they are in another mood, however, these same people insist that their guy is a natural heir to Buckley, Goldwater, Reagan, and the rest — well within that tradition. And how dare you suggest otherwise?
My conclusion: They’re happy to say it themselves. (Happy to say that the GOP and the conservative movement are transformed.) But they take offense when you say it.
• A report in the Financial Times begins, “European capitals are drawing up ways to insulate EU decisions from Viktor Orbán’s increasing use of vetoes as Hungary takes over the bloc’s rotating presidency on July 1.” I am reminded of the phrase “Trump-proof.” Here is an article from April: “NATO Tries to Trump-Proof Ukraine Aid.” Here is an article from December: “On NATO, Congress quietly takes step to Trump-proof foreign policy.” One could go on.
At any rate: good luck.
• “Elinor Fuchs, a Leading Scholar of the American Stage, Is Dead at 91.” To read that obit (published in the New York Times), go here. Ms. Fuchs was the daughter of Joseph Fuchs, a well-known violinist, who taught at Juilliard. She herself taught at Yale. She was a theater critic and a theater scholar, both.
The Times’s obit quotes a former student of hers, David Bruin, who teaches at NYU: “There’s just a kind of hard-won, boots-on-the-ground knowledge that comes from seeing theater night after night and having to write about it. It just brought her whole body of work into focus.”
I relate to Mr. Bruin’s statement. I think he is spot-on.
• In my Impromptus on Monday, I recalled some cigarette slogans, including “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” I said that grammarians objected to that slogan — because the “like,” strictly speaking, should have been “as.”
What I did not know, or had forgotten, is that Winston made hay of this. A reader sent me a couple of ads — including this one, from 1970:
Pretty good, huh?
• I was talking last week about the algorithm — being trapped by the “algo” (or benefited by it? That is a question). I was talking about life online. The use of platforms such as X and YouTube. Later, I thought of a note that Richard Brookhiser sent me after I joined Twitter, as X was then known. That was in 2015. He quoted from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, “A Descent into the Maelström,” to wit:
Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel, vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.
Golly.
I would like to relate a story, which might chime with you. Last week, I attended a family reunion of sorts — anyway, a gathering of old friends, many of them related, some of them not. I arrived about 6:30. At about 9:30, as we were winding up, I reached for my phone, because I wanted to send an article to the person with whom I was talking. Uh-oh. Couldn’t find my phone. Must have dropped it, left it somewhere. We searched for maybe 20 minutes. No sign of the phone.
Then it occurred to me — weird thought: Did I leave it in the car? You know, I had.
I had gone three hours — three hours — without touching my phone. I was simply engaged, gratifyingly, with the people around me.
Gosh, what a gift.
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