Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Who’s worse: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Kash Patel?
Gail Collins: Gee, Bret, good question. Easy to imagine R.F.K. Jr. screwing up the vaccination system and sending throngs of people to the hospital, if not worse. But I have to go for Kash Patel — just the idea of giving Donald Trump an F.B.I. director who’d be his yes-man is truly scary.
Who’s your pick?
Bret: They’re all dreadful, though I think Patel came out of his hearing looking marginally less awful than he did when he came in. Stressing the word “marginally” here because, ethically and intellectually, he’s about as far from his predecessor, Christopher Wray, as the Earth is from Pluto. The idea of any F.B.I. director “purging” his bureau of ideologically suspect employees smacks of some Warsaw Pact dictatorship.
On the other hand, both Gabbard and R.F.K. Jr. were … atrocious, abhorrent, anaphylactically abominable. The idea of having a director of National Intelligence who for years was a leading apologist for dictators like Bashar al-Assad and traitors like Edward Snowden is hard to stomach. But maybe not as hard to stomach as a legal shakedown artist, conspiracy theorist and medical misinformer in charge of the American federal health system. So I guess my vote for worst nominee in U.S. cabinet history goes to Bobby-Baby-Chickens-in-the-Blender-K.
Do you think they’ll get confirmed?
Gail: Well, you know how good-natured Trump is about Republican shows of dissent. There are a handful of party moderates who may be trying to figure out a way to look at least a teeny, weeny bit sort-of independent. If any of them comes up with the guts to cast a vote against one single nominee, Kennedy seems like a relatively easy choice — even his cousin Caroline can’t stand him.
And Tulsi Gabbard — you didn’t really think this administration was going to have a wise director of National Intelligence, did you?
Bret: I suspect that Trump wouldn’t mind seeing Gabbard and Kennedy voted down. Unlike Patel, whose job is to protect Trump from legal scrutiny, those two were chosen for purely transactional reasons — two former Democrats giving Trump their public support and whatever votes they brought with them. I don’t think he feels any loyalty to either of them, or any need politically for them.
If a few Republican senators like Bill Cassidy, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Todd Young and Susan Collins vote them down, Trump will wind up with the best of all worlds. He can scapegoat evil RINOs for their defeat while getting an opportunity to appoint better people.
Gail: Sigh. You know, I’m getting really tired of waking up in the morning and knowing it’s probably going to be a good day for Bad Guy. If your prediction comes to pass, who do you think he should nominate next?
Bret: I’d suggest Jon Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, for the director of National Intelligence job and former Senate majority leader Bill Frist for Health and Human Services. Huntsman was a well-respected ambassador to China for President Barack Obama and then, in Trump’s first term, to Russia. Frist was an accomplished surgeon before he went into politics; he even saved David Petraeus’s life.
Of course, this being Trump, he’ll never go for those ideas. And I’m really beginning to wonder about his supposed newfound competence. Twenty-five percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada? Really? Either it’s a terrible negotiating strategy or a gigantic economic blunder that will raise prices on American consumers. It already feels like a presidency that’s off the rails. But I’ve underestimated Trump’s political strength so many times before, and I also have to confess he’s done a few things I like.
Gail: Nononono, I said luck, not competence. And don’t you think the luck will run out once the farmers have to try to handle their crops without migrant labor — and consumers have to pay higher prices for homegrown food and imports?
Bret: I’m not convinced that Trump is just lucky, except maybe in the stupidity of his political adversaries. The paradox of Trump is that, as terrible as he is on some issues, he’s done well on others.
Gail: OK, name two.
Bret: I’ll name more than two. Ending D.E.I. in the federal government — and thereby the relentless racialization and genderization of personnel management that D.E.I. entailed. Insisting the government will recognize only two sexes — thereby helping to protect women’s rights, especially in sports. Promoting domestic energy production — helping, at least in the long term, to undermine oil- and gas-reliant economies like Russia’s by bringing down the global price of energy. Demanding serious border enforcement — underscoring the need for a meaningful concept of national sovereignty. Deregulation — allowing businesses and entrepreneurs to unshackle themselves from unnecessary, costly and needlessly complicated government rules. And sowing some useful fear in bad actors like the regime in Tehran — and perhaps inspiring the people of Iran to free themselves of that tyranny.
Most of all, Trump is forcing at least some Democrats to start coming to grips with the ways their party totally lost touch with regular Americans. That alone is valuable.
Gail: Let’s talk for a minute about D.E.I. in federal hiring — diversity, equity and inclusion, to give its full name. Think it’s fair to say we differ on this one. Seems like a worthy goal to me. And you feel it discourages the government from picking the best candidates for open jobs.
Well, last week Trump blamed the tragic plane crash in Washington on D.E.I. Want to comment?
Bret: Trump saying something dumb, which he does roughly 30 times a day, does not invalidate the broader merits of the case against D.E.I.
Gail: We’re not talking about setting racial, religious and sexual orientation quotas. We’re talking about encouraging employers to look beyond applicants whose backgrounds match those of the bosses and their friends.
Bret: Which, as any honest employer will tell you, at least privately, tends to devolve in practice into a de facto system of set-asides based largely on the identity of an employee or contractor. And also, in some cases, a quiet but damaging erosion of standards, like the weakening of the Army’s fitness requirements that I wrote about in my column last week. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be against D.E.I. if the “E” stood for excellence instead of equity. By all means, let’s be inclusive and diverse, but never at the expense of merit as determined by impartial, consistent, colorblind, gender-blind standards.
Of course, Trump, nepotist extraordinaire, isn’t exactly the world’s best messenger for meritocracy. But this is one of those issues where I think Democrats would be wise to move away from D.E.I. and identity politics in general. It’s hurting them with regular voters who are sick of being divided into every conceivable category except the one that should really count: American. I hope Ken Martin, the newly elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, gets that.
By the way, did you see the news about The Star-Ledger?
Gail: Sigh. As our Tracey Tully wrote in a journalistic obituary, The Star-Ledger was New Jersey’s longtime paper of record, which once fielded the largest State House bureau in the nation. It’s going to shift to an online-only format.
Having spent my early career writing for local print papers I’ve always been a big fan. Even if the stories about, say, a meeting of the zoning board of appeals aren’t exactly eye-grabbers, they were always so important for making local officials feel somebody was watching what they did besides the special interests.
Think online journalism is going to do the same job?
Bret: The evolution away from print seems only natural in this digital age. What really worries me is that this is just the latest symptom of decay in our industry, particularly when it comes to local or statewide news of the sort at which The Star-Ledger excelled. Part of what ails America is pervasive local misgovernance, abetted by the fact that state capitals like Trenton and Albany are, for many voters, informational black holes.
This is one area where I think philanthropists can make a meaningful difference by sponsoring high-quality local-news initiatives, even when they aren’t profitable. It’s happening in places, but some of those efforts have a clear ideological bias. It won’t work unless readers of any political color trust what they are reading.
Gail: Agree. Back when I was a state government reporter in Connecticut, there were so many journalists watching the legislature they had to create a second press room just to accommodate them all. Now much of the time hardly anybody shows up — folks tell me even the legislators like to stay home and do their business online.
Finding philanthropists to fund nonprofit coverage is certainly better than nothing, Not gonna whine about all the dangers of ideological bias until we get a little further along.
Bret: So long as the philanthropist is neither Elon Musk nor George Soros. Or their ilk. There’s gotta be someone out there with a few billion bucks who’d like to keep the news straight.