A dear friend of mine asked me the other day, “Wait, are we voting for president this year?” Then she corrected herself. “Of course. It just feels like more should be happening.”
Yes, it does. It’s really hard to describe how different the atmosphere is between the elections of 2016 and 2020 and this one in 2024. The first and especially the second Trump campaign for the White House released a febrile energy into the public mood. I once went back to my 2020 inboxes, and I could not believe the regularity of violent threats I received for the mildest criticisms of Trump, or for the mildest praise. Like millions of Americans that year, my attitude about personal security changed profoundly.
There is a debate tonight, and I’m afraid it won’t be a debate that we badly need. America has a future and it needs to plan for it. On foreign policy, we need to decide: Do we want to rebuild a two-major-war-ready force? Or do we want to spend a little less, but more wisely, and focus on deterring China, while handing more responsibility off to our allies in Europe?
How do we want to address America’s financial perils? What must we cut and where?
How do we reform health care such that it doesn’t soak up one-sixth of our economic output? Or education? We are about to see a massive downsizing in this sector. Can we stop investing so much public money into higher education?