In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.Tags:
Gary Coronado/Palm Beach Post, via Associated PressDonald Trump at a Tea Party rally in Boca Raton, Fla., on April 16.David Brooks: Gail, every few years around this time I get Iowa fever. I get excited at the prospect of going out to Davenport or Pocahontas and riding in the backseat of a van with some second- or third-tier politicians as they shuttle between coffee shops, doughnut shops and community centers trying to get elected president.
Gail Collins: David, you definitely know how to have a good time. Personally, I hate Iowa. Not the people, who are lovely, but the caucuses, which are nuts. The idea of getting everybody in your neighborhood together in the gym to choose a president sounds quaint and adorable, but it’s a game for the super-mobilized, which unfortunately often means the lunatic fringe. Particularly on the Republican side. And Iowa voters are so entitled! These people won’t vote for any candidate who hasn’t been to their house.
It used to be that an invisible hierarchy governed who ran for president; that hierarchy has been smashed.
David Brooks: This year I’ve heard some discouraging reports from the field. In the first place, while the media is allegedly dying, the number of people apparently working for media outlets is expanding exponentially. It is no longer possible to be the only press person with a candidate, apparently, or even one of three or four. Now there are squads of videobloggers surrounding even the no-hopers, a scrum of cameras and recording devices. The road-show intimacy of the early primary season is gone. Now it is reality TV from start to finish.
Gail Collins: Never had a great bonding moment on the presidential campaign trail. Generally, I only get to like candidates after they lose and get over the whole thing. Like Bill Bradley. I had a very nice talk with him the other day, but when he was running for president, the only meaningful interchange I can remember was when he refused to reveal his favorite book because he was afraid I’d read too much into it. Still, I do feel your pain, sort of.
David Brooks: Then there is the fact that the Humphrey Factor is fading. It used to be that every respectable politician had a burning desire inside themselves to be president. And so in every race you could count on a few Dick Lugars or Howard Bakers or Paul Simons to lend gravitas to the affair.
Gail Collins: You want a better class of hopeless losers?
David Brooks: Now it is demeaning to run for president. If you are a halfway serious person you have to spend a year standing onstage with circus acts. You could find yourself wedged in between Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump on the debate stage week after week. The hotels in Iowa and New Hampshire don’t have enough soap in the bathrooms to make you feel dignified after a few months of that.
Gail Collins: I’m enjoying your rant. But I think the real phenomenon is the democratization of the early presidential debates, when almost anybody who wants some attention can elbow their way onstage. I could definitely have lived without the Mike Gravels and Fred Thompsons. Remember when Fred Thompson was the Next Big Thing for the Republicans? Now he’s on TV, peddling reverse mortgages to seniors.
David Brooks: We’re seeing the result of a democratization of American culture. It used to be that an invisible hierarchy governed who ran for president. To think about running, one had to have achieved a certain stature in national life. You had to be a senator or a governor, preferably from a larger state. It would have been a shocking effrontery to even think of running without qualifications. But now hierarchies have been smashed, standards are loosened and any publicity hound can run. Gresham’s law has taken over so the campaign trail is now inhospitable to anyone with self-respect. A few qualified candidates still run, but more and more decline.
I think the real phenomenon is the democratization of the early presidential debates, when almost anybody who wants some attention can elbow their way onstage.
Gail Collins: I can’t tell if your underlying angst is the lousy field of Republican candidates or the reality show phenomenon, which presumes that anybody can try out for anything. But even today the presumption is that the person who actually wins will be worthy. Except maybe on “Celebrity Apprentice.”
David Brooks: This week’s Trump boomlet is a perfect example of the trend. In my column Tuesday, I tried to make a couple of points about Trump. First, I think Walt Whitman would appreciate his relentless energy and boyish cravings. America was built by ambitious vulgarians polite people wouldn’t dine with. The vulgarians offer a nice counterpoint to the excesses of genteel culture. But that doesn’t mean they are fit for statesmanship, or qualified for high office.
Gail Collins: The first time I met Donald Trump, I asked him whether he’d ever thought about spending his money to help the poor. He started talking about how he wanted to take over a disease, the way Jerry Lewis had muscular dystrophy. But he seemed to feel all the good diseases were taken. I have strong objections to his taste in architecture but I never felt particularly offended by his periodic faux candidacies until this time, when he hitched his star to the birthers. That stuff isn’t funny.
David Brooks: All of this could be solved through the re-erection of social standards — codes of propriety. It should be considered poor taste to run for president unless you have voted on at least 750 cloture motions. It is in bad taste to run for president unless you have presided over five state budgets. You may call me a snob and an elitist, but the current G.O.P. field is turning me into Emily Post. We don’t need primaries and caucuses for half these people; we need finishing school.
