Hello and happy Saturday. I can’t remember precisely the first time I heard the adage—familiar to parents everywhere—that “the days are long but the years are short,” but it has stayed with me through years of balancing school and sports and pets and homework and dinner and everything else.
And it hit home extra hard this week as our middle son turned 18. He’s at once a dedicated athlete, incredibly charming and a good friend to anyone he meets, an adventurous spirit, and maddeningly deft at avoiding cleaning his room and mowing the lawn.
As I was looking back on old photos this past week, I came across a classic that gave me some perspective. Eight years ago, he and my husband stumbled upon a store that sold silly hats and T-shirts, and my then-tiny 10-year-old donned a trucker hat emblazoned with the words Deez Nuts 2016. In the photo, he’s giggling uncontrollably.
For me, an adult who has worked in political media for more than two decades, the last eight years have been exhausting and challenging and rewarding (at times) but also something of a blur. And yet younger generations have known nothing else as far as news goes. The child who wore the goofy hat in that photograph was blissfully ignorant of politics: He was attracted to a juvenile joke. This year, he will accompany me to the ballot box. And the same dynamics that encouraged “anyone but the actual candidates on the ballot” messaging are still at play.
When I was a kid, my parents never discussed partisan politics with me, so I came to my beliefs based on what I learned by observing, and I’ve been forever grateful for that. And so we’ve encouraged our kids to figure out their ideology on their own. Our oldest is very engaged with the issues—we disagree on a lot of things, but he’s smart and we have great conversations. Our middle son has largely avoided politics (though he can talk about rap or sports for hours), but he’s engaged enough to make an informed vote in November.
It makes me sad that the options aren’t great. The Dispatch is publishing a series of articles leading up to the election wherein policy experts explain their biggest concerns about either or both potential incoming administrations. And the overall outlook is pessimistic. We started with foreign policy and this week we covered economic policy and social policy. The theme running through them: Both candidates fail to inspire confidence, they will try to implement a populist agenda, and they are short on policy ideas.
My first presidential vote came in 1992, for George H.W. Bush. A year before, I’d taken an introductory political science class taught by a young, charismatic instructor who was a proud democratic socialist. But he was intellectually honest and a bit heterodox. It was in his class (probably to his dismay), that I formed my ideology. I remember an early class where he drew a line down the middle of the chalkboard and then asked us to list what we considered liberal and conservative views, and he wrote them on the left and right side of the board, accordingly. And then we had to review those lists and figure out where we aligned. That’s when I realized I was conservative.
Kids today are exposed to politics earlier than I was, but what they’re seeing doesn’t exactly help them form a consistent philosophy. Both sides refuse to grapple with fiscal responsibility or doing the hard work of negotiating feasible solutions to problems like immigration. And that doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon. But I hope it does before our sons are taking photos of their own kids wearing Any Functional Adult 2044 hats.
Thanks for reading and have a good weekend.
Given Donald Trump has effectively dominated conservative politics and the Republican Party for almost a decade despite everything, how much blame for his longevity can be assigned to his followers? A lot of it, Kevin writes in Wanderland (🔒). He notes that “gigantic stampeding herds of people buy into stupid and false ideas, believe patently untrue things, do dumb things, or, in the case at hand, support this particular lunatic and would-be caudillo, frequently because they are good Christians who think that what we need in government is this particular griftastical habitual liar and retired game-show host.” He takes a moment to highlight some of America’s greatest contributions to the world, only to lament the value of the American voter: “There is, for most Americans, no real price to pay for having stupid or wicked political affiliations. As an engineer friend of mine likes to say: ‘Stupid should hurt.’ In the matter of American politics, stupid doesn’t hurt as much as it should.”
Jonah kicks off the Wednesday G-File (🔒) by discussing Theseus’ Paradox. Theseus is a hero of Greek mythology who slayed the Minotaur and saved Athenian children, escaping in a ship. Athenians commemorated the rescue by taking his ship on a pilgrimage. The ship had to be maintained to stay seaworthy, so planks were removed and replaced. After a few hundred years … is it still Theseus’ ship? Likewise, he wonders what conservatism will look like when Trump is done with it. Will any hallmark beliefs remain? He writes: “Conservatives used to be adamant to the point of prudish sanctimony about the importance of good character. … Free markets and free trade used to at least be ideals, even if political necessity sometimes required compromise. … Strong alliances were the bedrock of conservative foreign policy from Eisenhower to Bush. Defending, even if only sometimes rhetorically, freedom and democracy and denouncing tyranny was conservative dogma.” Alas, no longer. Jonah continues, “Trump’s most committed defenders celebrate all of this and call it conservatism. But far more people simply line up like the monkeys who see, hear, and speak no evil because in this partisan climate the only abiding political evil is to speak ill of Trump, at least in public.”
Israelis are watching the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump closely, and Charlotte writes that in general, they “see former President Donald Trump as a preferable option.” They might be grateful for Joe Biden’s support, but they are less certain about his vice president taking over. While Kamala Harris has been sympathetic to the plight of the Israeli people, she has at times been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And people wonder how she will handle Iran. While Harris identified Iran as America’s greatest adversary in her 60 Minutes interview earlier this month, she has in the past supported a return to the Iran nuclear deal that Trump abandoned as president, and some Israelis fear that she’ll continue the Democrats’ practice of emphasizing diplomacy over confrontation with the Islamic Republic. “If you speak with decision makers, it’s sort of a mixed message. Basically they would say that on the one hand, Harris is much more predictable than President Trump and they understand the logic, the rationale there,” Nadav Eyal, a prominent Israeli political commentator, told Charlotte. But also, people are “very unhappy with the Biden administration’s policy in the region.”
And here’s the best of the rest:
- The Dispatch Politics team is racking up the miles in various swing states. On Thursday, we reported from Wisconsin, finding that both candidates for the Badger State’s Senate seat, Republican Eric Hovde and Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin, are sticking to the issues and ignoring the race at the top of the ticket. And in North Carolina, we found Bill Clinton still enjoying his time on the trail—so much so that he spoke at a Durham rally for 40 minutes, going on and on until even the crowd was weary.
- Cliff Smith reflects on the brilliance of The Shawshank Redemption, 30 years after its release. A box office flop, Shawshank developed a kind of cult following once it hit video stores and cable television. Smith writes, “Shawshank is not a ‘realistic’ film. … But like all great melodramas, its truths are communicated through overstatement.”
- In Capitolism (🔒), Scott details the various ways that President Trump could implement his (potentially economically devastating) global tariffs, and is worried that neither Congress nor the courts will be able to stop him.
- In Boiling Frogs (🔒), Nick reviews Donald Trump’ increasingly erratic behavior and dangerous rhetoric and laments, “We’ve seen a lot of him this year, especially lately, and he’s never sounded uglier. Yet never once during his presidency was his rating as high as it is at this moment.”
- Helene wasn’t the first hurricane to hit Asheville, North Carolina. The remnants of a 1916 storm left the city in dire conditions similar to Helene, and it’s suffered damage from the French Broad River flooding at other points. In Techne, Will looks back at a dam project that was scuttled by landowners and environmentalists in the 1960s and wonders whether any project to mitigate flood damage for Asheville could ever come to be.
- And the pods: Megan McArdle of the Washington Post joins the gang on The Dispatch Podcast to discuss Kamala Harris’ media blitz, including her interview on Fox News. David and Sarah welcome Fiasco podcaster Leon Nayfakh to Advisory Opinions to discuss his new season, which is about Bush v. Gore and the 2020 election. And if you didn’t get your fill of tariff talk from Scott’s newsletter, check out his conversation with Jonah on The Remnant. And if you missed Dispatch Live this week, you can still catch Steve and Jonah’s annual State of The Dispatch conversation here.
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