Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I’m having a flashback to April 2017, just after my arrival at The Times from The Wall Street Journal. It was, uh, a bit of a hard landing. You introduced yourself, told me you co-wrote an online column called “The Conversation,” and asked if I would like to be your next sparring partner/victim.
Eight years and nearly 300 of these published conversations later, we’re bringing this to a finale so that we can each work on our books. Any reflections about this long, fun, wild run we’ve had?
Gail Collins: Have to admit I was surprised it was such a pleasure to do. I love my work, but I was still shocked to find myself thinking “Oh great, tomorrow’s conversation day.”
Bret: And I was amazed at the way it resonated with so many readers. To borrow a phrase from your second-least-favorite president, there’s a silent majority of people who prefer our style of good-humored disagreement to the endless food fight that is today’s politics. Although, I also think we have President Trump to thank for giving us a subject that always gave us something to agree about most of the time.
Gail: Guess the way to start our finale is to just … converse. Ready to roll?
Bret: Well, as a Jew to a Catholic: My condolences about Pope Francis. Also as a Jew to a Catholic? Things tend to work better when you allow your clergy to marry. Just saying.
Gail: Having been raised Catholic back in the day, I spent untold hours of school, all the way through 12th grade, trapped in discussions about the importance of virginity until marriage — even if you didn’t take a husband until you were 40. So much of the nuttiness on the subject has been a reflection of the fact that the Church rules on sexual morality were set by guys who had never been with a woman.
Bret: I’ll refrain from saying what you know I’m thinking.
Gail: But the great thing about Pope Francis was that he believed in following the rules himself, but not in forcing them on the whole world. His great legacy was a triumph of tolerance.
Bret: Amen and rest in peace. On to an entirely unholy subject: Do you think Trump will ever fire Pete Hegseth?
Gail: Wow, what do you think our secretary of defense will come up with next? Inadvertently leaving the plans for nuclear war behind when he visits his second wife? Given that he has been married three times, has four children and three stepchildren, I guess you can see how he can’t always remember who he’s sharing military secrets with.
Bret: Apparently, the only job on earth with a faster turnover rate than being married to Hegseth is working for him: He’s fired or lost four aides in the last month. Another ex-adviser, John Ullyot, an ardent Trumper, has described the situation at the Pentagon as “total chaos.”
But I doubt the president will fire Hegseth, at least not anytime soon. First, because it would mean Trump admitting that he was wrong and that people like Mitch McConnell, who voted against Hegseth’s confirmation, were right. Second, because Hegseth’s manifest incompetence guarantees his loyalty to the president. Third, because Trump probably enjoys seeing Hegseth like this, hanging by a thread. Fourth, because for Trump no institution of government is sacred, and having a clown like Hegseth atop the Pentagon drives home the message that there’s nothing in America he isn’t willing to trash.
Gail: See, this is why I’m gonna miss conversing with you. Great list.
Bret: I forgot a fifth reason: Hegseth’s job is safe so long as he wears those well-tailored suits that Trump finds so handsome.
Gail: It reminded me once again that so much of our Trump trauma comes from electing a reality TV star as president. By that reasoning, I’d say Pete H. was bound to last for the next four years as defense secretary, but we’ve also seen that his boss is a guy who can just get up in the morning with a totally changed mind. Probably after reading some variation on the theme of TV ratings — or just hearing something someone said to him in one of his late-night phone calls.
Bret: To cite Forrest Gump, life under Trump is like a box of chocolates, because you never know what you’re going to get. Except that it’s a Pandora’s box. And … they aren’t chocolates.
Gail: You know, it’s hard to believe, but over the years we may have spent more time arguing about Joe Biden than bemoaning Trump. Deeply on the same page about whether Biden should have announced his retirement earlier but still, I think, in deep disagreement about his performance as president before he went sorta blank.
Bret: Don’t you think the only truly important metric of his performance was that he bequeathed us Trump’s second coming?
Gail: Well, certainly a biggie. But I don’t believe Biden’s stubbornness should wipe out all the positive parts of his time in office. He was a good president on so many levels, from student loans to clean air to fairer taxes. You still disagree?
Bret: To my mind, Biden will be remembered as the president who could never just sit on one stool if given the chance to fall between two. Was he a unifying, healing and transitional figure in the mold of Gerald Ford? Or a radical domestic reformer in the mold of F.D.R. and L.B.J.? Was he a brave Trumanesque cold warrior shoring up Ukraine’s defenses in the face of Russia’s onslaught, or a Carteresque half-measures guy whose support for Kyiv was perpetually a case of never enough and never on time? Did he restore honesty and integrity to the White House or mislead the American people about his health while using his office to pardon his son the criminal?
Another big argument we’ve had over the years concerns wealth and taxes. I’m very much for the former and not so keen on the latter.
Gail: Last-conversation confession: When I felt we’d been agreeing too much, I almost always threw in something about income taxes to ensure a fight.
Bret: Starting a political fight was a tactic my mom used with my dad so that he wouldn’t get sleepy behind the wheel on long drives through Mexico.
Gail: The United States has always been basically a free-enterprise country. Nearly all the top taxpayers are millionaires. That’s not a bad thing, but it does require us to do what we can to make sure the poor don’t suffer from starvation or untreated illness and that they have access to educational opportunities that would allow them to move up.
Bret: Living, as I do, at the ragged edge of the upper class, I don’t think it’s right to fork over nearly half my income in taxes.
Gail: Despite our multitudinous arguments on this topic, I’m proud to be in a country that basically believes the rich should contribute a reasonable amount to help the less fortunate rise up.
Bret: The best way to give the less fortunate a hand is to be able to give them a job. Money doled out by the government too often is money that feeds an ever-growing bureaucracy and perpetuates, among its supposed beneficiaries, disabling habits of dependency.
Gail: Government employment programs are fine. And I’m not saying, by the way, that we shouldn’t be wary of government waste. One of the endless list of bad things about Elon Musk is that he made the war against useless overspending look so dopey and threatening that it’ll probably be ages before liberals approach it again.
Bret: Like Trump, Musk is also someone we agree on. Two self-infatuated narcissists who’ve sold a bill of goods to their credulous cultists. But I think we disagree on things like the benefits of electric vehicles.
Gail: You bring that up almost as much as I do taxes. Electric cars have certainly had some ups and downs, but currently they have a much lower breakdown rate than combustibles, and they’re part of the path toward battling climate change.
The big challenge is to make sure drivers can get recharged when they’re away from home, and a forward-looking president could offer some help in getting more abundant service.
Bret: Except they depend on batteries whose components must be mined in ecologically destructive ways, often in places with terrible environmental and labor records and corrupt governments. For me, the point gets to the heart of my innate conservatism: Whatever sounds too good to be true — from trying to end poverty in the 1960s to creating nonpolluting vehicles in the 2000s and now to electing a celebrity tycoon to Make America Great Again — is sure to be a lie.
Gail: Your take is certainly reasonable, but it rules out the possibility of any serious leap forward — and I think Americans should be raised to believe big good things can happen, even now.
Bret: Sure. But rarely from Washington.
Gail: I’m remembering the first time I ever heard Barack Obama speak — it was some unthrilling event for a cause I’ve completely forgotten. But I will always remember listening to this young politician who was not just really smart and funny but darned moving when he talked. And that some of the younger women responded by actually fainting.
He just seemed so … future. And the administration he headed produced some amazing changes, including the deeply complicated but clearly established right of our citizens to have health care protection, whatever their age.
Maybe there’ll be some new Obama-like candidate who comes along. So sorry I won’t be able to torture you with my outpourings every week.
Bret: But you’ll still be able to do so over lunches and dinners. Just not with our usual audience.
Which reminds me: these conversations of ours would never have lasted the way they have if it weren’t for the fact that our readers stuck with us over all these years, no matter whether they were intrigued by something you said or exasperated by something I said. They’re the ones who made this little experiment such an unexpected hit. And they kept us going in all sorts of ways, often in person. I will never forget standing on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, waiting for an Uber, when a stranger asked me if I was Bret Stephens. “That’s me,” I said, smugly. He laughed and said, “Gail Collins is my favorite columnist!”
We disagreed on a lot of things, Gail. But as our brilliant colleague, indefatigable editor, peerless headline writer and dear friend Aaron Retica points out, “we believed in reality over fantasy, wit over dullness, the twist and the turn over playing it straight. Turns out you can make something pretty remarkable with those materials.” Happy book writing!
Gail: Happy book writing back to you. And although you’ve traditionally always ended our conversations, tonight I claim one last chance to effuse about what a great partner you’ve been. I don’t think we had a single fight about anything other than, um, the future of the nation.
Even in my deeply, deeply Democratic neighborhood on New York’s Upper West Side, people are always stopping me to ask “How’s Bret?” and make it clear they love the idea of having smart, friendly conversations with somebody on the other side.
Somebody who has a great sense of humor. Hanging out with you like this for eight years was such a pleasure. Both because you could make me laugh and because you always came up with some wonderful finale in which you quoted everybody from Victorian poets to S.N.L. comedians.
Adios for now, Bret. Gonna miss you more than I can say.