Gail Collins: Bret, I guess we should begin with the queen. Hey, that’s a change of pace, right?
Bret Stephens: I’m trying to process the fact that I found myself tearing up while listening to the story of her life put together for the paper by Alan Cowell.
Gail: Alan’s piece was perfect, but I have to admit I haven’t been tempted to break into tears over the queen’s passing. Possibly because my household has Irish roots. You can appreciate what she achieved without romanticizing the whole British Empire thing.
Bret: At the risk of digital defenestration, I will say that I tend to think the British Empire wasn’t an entirely bad thing for the world.
Gail: [Here Gail bops Bret on the head, hard, with a bottle of Jameson.]
Bret: Ouch, Gail! OK, before I get into even deeper trouble with some of our readers, she did preside gracefully over said empire’s demise and, as Maureen Dowd pointed out in her lovely column over the weekend, won over quite a few Irish hearts.
The queen also made you realize that there is nothing as compelling as something that is supposed to be anachronistic — because it endures against fashion, resistance, indifference, decay, contradiction and time. Just like Joe Biden, apparently.
Gail: Heh. Let’s let domestic politics sit for a minute and stay on the queen. I love the way you put that compelling-anachronism line, but my response is that things tend to get anachronistic because they’re just out of date.
Bret: Well, true.
Gail: But as I said, it’s easy to appreciate the queen’s achievement in just chugging on and smiling at strangers for so very, very long. Guess one of the messages of the moment is that nobody lives forever.
Bret: The Atlantic magazine sent its subscribers an email on the day she died with the accidentally funny headline, “Queen Elizabeth’s Unthinkable Death.”
Gail: We’ll see what happens next with the royal family. Will tourists still be clustering around to get a glimpse of that golden coach if the person waving from inside is Charles? Who, by the way, has always seemed like a dork.
Bret: I feel for him, and not just because he’s lost both his parents in less than two years. Christopher Hitchens once had a memorable take on the royals, saying the love the British have for them “takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up.”
Gail: Do the unexceptional people include their actual elected officials?
Bret: Many of them are exceptional, although some are just exceptionally bad.
Gail: I always did think the queen could have retired early so Charles would have had a chance to be the sovereign before he hit his 70s. But so it goes.
On the home front, I’m getting sort of fascinated by the big Senate races coming into the homestretch. Any favorites for you?
Bret: I’m trying to wrap my head around the possibility of Senator Herschel Walker, who would be to Georgia what, er, Marjorie Taylor Greene is to Georgia.
The Arizona Senate race between Mark Kelly and Blake Masters is a little too close for comfort, given that every week seems to bring a new disclosure about Masters’ deep unsuitability for high office — most recently his “9/11 Truther-curious” stand in college. I try not to hold people accountable for whatever they believed in college, but I’d make an exception in this case.
How about you? What races are you looking at?
Gail: Well, as an Ohio native I have to be riveted by the battle between Tim Ryan, a perfectly rational Democratic congressman, and the Republican candidate, J.D. Vance, who sorta peaked when he wrote “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Bret: And when he was a fervent Never-Trumper.
Gail: And then there’s Wisconsin, where Mandela Barnes, the Democratic lieutenant governor, is running a very strong race against Senator Ron Johnson. A campaign high point came when Johnson told conservatives he’d only taken a moderate position on same-sex marriage to get the media “off my back.”
Bret: That’s the worst of both worlds, isn’t it? His principles are lousy, and he’s not a man of principle.
Gail: I have to commend you on rising above partisanship and refusing to support truly terrible Republican candidates in places like Georgia and Arizona. Would you hold firm to that even if it meant a difference in which party controlled the Senate?
Bret: In some pre-2016 universe, I’d be rooting for a Republican sweep. And I’d be rooting for Republicans to take at least one chamber in this election, except that so many of the Republicans on the ballot are so unmitigatedly awful that, as the kids say, “I can’t even.”
Gail: Yippee!
Bret: On the other hand, I think it’s pretty hypocritical that pro-Democratic groups are spending tens of millions of dollars helping MAGA types win Republican nominations, on the theory that they’ll be easier to beat in the general election. That’s what’s happening with the G.O.P. Senate primary in New Hampshire, where the Democrats are none too subtly helping a conspiracy theorist named Don Bolduc against his more mainstream rival, Chuck Morse.
I guess I’d find it a lot less loathsome if it were just a cynical electoral strategy. But it’s pretty rich coming from a party that is otherwise attacking “MAGA Republicans” as an existential threat to democracy.
Gail: Totally agree about those political action committees that were plotting to get the worst possible Republicans nominated just to increase Democratic chances.
But there’s a difference between that kind of scheme and simply criticizing the most likely Republican nominee just to get a start on the final campaign.
Bret: In some of these cases, they aren’t the likeliest nominees. And the lesson of 2016 is: Sometimes the bad guy wins.
Gail: Speaking of MAGA Republicans, you wrote a very powerful piece attacking Joe Biden for his anti-MAGA address in Philadelphia. Let’s revisit.
Bret: Well, here is where I trot out that old French quote about something being “worse than a crime, a mistake.” If Biden had wanted to denounce “election-denying Republicans” or “Jan. 6 Republicans” that would have been fine by me. But calling out “MAGA Republicans” is painting with way too broad a brush, especially when he suggested that anyone who was anti-abortion or opposed to gay marriage automatically belonged in that group. The whole speech reminded me of Hillary Clinton’s deadly “basket of deplorables” remark, which might have cost her the 2016 election: It did more to alienate a lot of voters than it did to persuade them.
What’s your take?
Gail: We’re talking about a Joe Biden speech, and I suspect that some of the responsible citizens who tuned in because they want to keep up on current events nodded off or switched to a “Simpsons” rerun before he wandered off into the Democratic agenda.
Bret: One day I’ll give you my theory on why “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Family Guy” represent the last best hope of mankind. Sorry …
Gail: But the Democratic agenda is a winner, even when Biden’s selling it. Middle-of-the-road voters are eager to hear about ways they might get more help with medical bills, especially for drugs.
And abortion! Don’t know if I’m amused or angry about all the Republican candidates who’ve suddenly scrubbed all mention of the subject off their websites.
Both, I guess.
Bret: It’s good to see voters energized to defend abortion rights at the state level. Not sure how winning the Democratic agenda is, except among Democrats themselves or their media allies who seem to think that inflation has been bested and the student-loan forgiveness plan is universally popular.
I know Democrats are now feeling confident about the midterms, at least when it comes to holding the Senate. But if I were on your team I’d curb the enthusiasm.
Gail: I do love the way you sneak references to TV shows into your comments. Tell me — just to stop talking about politics for a minute — what are your all-time favorite shows?
Bret: I probably should say “Seinfeld” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but I really do love my cartoons. My all-time favorite South Park episode is the one about the underpants gnomes, who go around stealing people’s underwear in the middle of the night in order to bring it to their underground lair. They have a three-phased approach to making money: Phase One, collect underpants. Phase Two, ? Phase Three, Profit.
That pretty much explains most government policies, plus a big part of the start-up economy. And you?
Gail: Hey, haven’t watched “South Park” for years. You’re inspiring me.
My all-time favorite is “The Sopranos,” the greatest series ever made. We’ve been watching it every night lately. When it’s over I’m ready for a comedy, and my No. 1 pick is “30 Rock.” Tina Fey is a genius. And despite not being a sports enthusiast, I have a strong attachment to “Friday Night Lights.”
I so hope our politics evolves again into something people want to gab about. Definitely worrisome that even at the most liberal dinner parties in town, people always wind up back at Donald Trump.
Except us, of course, Bret.
Bret: Us? Trump? Who?
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