Fixing the world with one conversation at a time

If only partisan extremists could read, understand and converse! A refreshing feature in The New York Times.

(Hey Marjorie!  Please call on me!) 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Didn’t Like What She Saw

Opinion conversation echo published in The New York Times by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens:

Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are Opinion columnists. They converse every week.

Gail Collins: So Bret, Joe Biden’s been on a roll. Economy good, State of the Union speech good — made even better by those Republican boobirds.

Republican boobird aka MTG!

Any complaints?

Bret Stephens: The economy is a mixed bag, with positive signals, like falling inflation and historically low unemployment, but also some worrying ones, like a labor-force participation rate that’s too low and big layoffs in Big Tech. I thought the speech was a mixed bag, too, with a feisty performance that will please liberals but not endear him to the majority of Americans, who still disapprove of his job performance by a seven-point margin.

But on the subject of Republican hecklers, what a disgrace. Never mind the geriatric president; the real danger is the prepubescent opposition.

Gail Collins: Well, if I ever want to make a good impression on a group, I’ll try to recruit Marjorie Taylor Greene to scream at me that I’m a liar.

Bret: Being called a liar by Greene is like being accused by Donald Trump of having a low I.Q. I believe that’s what Freudians call projection.

Gail: The Republican leaders were certainly better behaved. But they did seem desperate to reject any suggestion that their party wanted to cut back spending on Social Security and Medicare. I thought that was part of the plan all along. Wasn’t it?

Bret: Not as far as I’m aware, unless you mean Senator Rick Scott’s nonstarter proposal to sunset all federal legislation every five years.

Gail: Well, Scott was head of the Republican Senate re-election effort at the time.

Bret: Even Mitch McConnell dismissed Scott’s brainstorms out of hand. But if it means trying to save both programs from looming insolvency, then yes, you could say some Republicans are for that.

The other thing I found striking about the speech, Gail, is that it was probably the most unapologetically liberal State of the Union any Democratic president has delivered since Lyndon Johnson in the ’60s. I know you like a lot of the proposals, but will it win Biden a second term?

Gail: Which part do you think an average American voter would have hated? An assault weapons ban? Abortion rights? A tax on the superrich?


Bret: Well, abortion rights is a winning issue for Democrats, thanks to the terrible Dobbs decision. On the other hand, the billionaires’ tax is probably unconstitutional and also ineffective, since ultrawealthy people are pretty good at shielding their assets. And as our own polling guru Nate Cohn pointed out last summer, gun control is one of those issues that always seem to poll well but rarely decide elections.

Gail: One thing Biden’s speech demonstrated was how good a liberal agenda sounds to nonliberals when it’s presented by a guy who seems so mellow. People always looked down on Biden as a presidential candidate because he reminded them of somebody’s chatty great-uncle. Turns out, that these days, a nice great-uncle who wants to put a cap on drug prices is just what we’re looking for.

AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins, with AARP volunteers and Senators. Amy Klobuchar, left, and Debbie Stabenow, right, calls on Congress to pass the bill to lower prescription drug prices.

Bret: Our friend Frank Bruni had the best line on the same point in his newsletter last week. “For Donald Trump,” he wrote, “we needed noise-canceling headphones. For Biden, hearing aids.” It’s particularly sharp because the age question is only going to become more acute for Biden. Some of his fumbles, like calling Chuck Schumer the Senate minority leader, are going to stick in people’s minds.

Um, awkward segue here, but we really should talk about Senator John Fetterman.

Gail: So sorry to hear he was briefly hospitalized — and to learn, in a story by our newsroom colleague Annie Karni, that his long-term physical problems have made it difficult for him to deal with his work. Lesson No. 1: Joining the United States Senate is not the best possible agenda for a man who’s recovering from a serious stroke.

Bret: Obviously we wish him a full recovery ….

Gail: Fortunately, the Pennsylvania voters who chose him last year over Mehmet Oz — by nearly five percentage points — weren’t overly focused on Fetterman’s health situation. Lesson No. 2: These days, when it comes to congressional elections, the overriding issue is simply which party will control what.

Thanks to Pennsylvania, the answer in the Senate this year is the Democrats, and even if Fetterman can’t perform all his day-to-day duties as well as he’d hoped, as long as he can show up for votes, he’s fulfilling their most important mandate.

Bret: OK, total disagreement on this one. Being a senator isn’t just about voting a certain way. There’s also important committee and constituency work. If Fetterman’s doctors think he will eventually recover, then he should stay. But voters also deserve more transparency about his health than they got during the campaign or than they are getting now. If he can’t meet the demands of the office, he owes it to Pennsylvanians to step down and let Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, select his replacement.

Gail: Now Bret, on a totally different matter: I’ve always appreciated your willingness to go along with my foreign-affairs avoidance. But China has, I guess you could say, floated into domestic territory. Tell me if you have any new balloon thoughts.

Bret: What really gets me about the balloon caper (I am withholding judgment about the three U.F.O.s we shot down over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron until the little green men send me further instructions) isn’t the threat to national security. The Chinese can surely get most of the surveillance they need from orbiting satellites. It’s the nerve. The Chinese government thought it could get away with it on the eve of Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing. If they are that rude, stupid and cocky, what else do they think they can pull off?

Gail: Kinda' wondering if the Xi government did it just to look tough to their own people.

Bret: Well, we probably popped that balloon. My fear is that the Chinese regime, or elements inside it, may be spoiling for war. Have I mentioned that we need to start spending more on defense?

Gail: I’m very, very worried this is a prelude to a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan. While we should do everything we can to keep that from happening, there’s no way I would want to go to war over it.

Bret: I disagree, but you’re speaking for a lot of Americans, including a growing share of Republicans.

Gail: As far as our defense budget goes, I think we could get whatever money is needed by cutting costs someplace else in the Pentagon.

But just between us, if I rooted for higher military spending, would you oppose risking the lives of American troops over Taiwan?

Bret: I’m with President Biden on this one. The defense of Taiwan is a vital American interest, and not just because it’s the superpower of microchips. If Beijing conquers Taiwan, it will just whet its appetite for aggression against our other allies, including Japan and the Philippines. So trying to stay out of it will only make our problems larger, not smaller. I also think our commitment to Taiwan’s freedom is akin to President Harry Truman’s stands for West Berlin and South Korea. Those sacrifices in blood and treasure paid long-term dividends for global freedom and American prosperity.

But speaking of long-term threats to the country, Gail, I was shocked but not surprised to read that two-thirds of American fourth graders are not proficient in reading. What a disaster. Thoughts on fixing?

Gail: Nothing more important to worry about than reading skills. But you don’t want to encourage an obsession over tests. There’s way too much of that already — even preschools are drilling their kids in preparation for kindergarten entrance exams.

Bret: On this point, Gail, we agree. The endless testing is turning kids into nervous wrecks. And clearly it’s not helping them get any better at reading and math.

Gail: Let’s focus on early childhood education — if it’s the right quality, kids will move on to grade school with skills in problem solving and critical thinking that make the next level so much easier.

That, of course, would require a lot more money. Jill Biden has made it one of her top crusades, and cheers to the first lady for that.

Bret: I’m pretty sure the United States spends much more per student than most other countries, only to achieve lackluster results. Different suggestion: Let’s adopt phonics more widely for early reading, give up new math for old math and urge parents to read to and with their children for at least an hour each night.

Gail: Preschool education is one of our biggest fights, so I guess this conversation needs to be continued …

Bret: Before we go, Gail, I hope our readers don’t miss Richard Sandomir’s beautiful obituary for Solomon Perel, a.k.a. Josef Perjell, who died in Israel this month at 97. If you remember the film “Europa, Europa,” you’ll know his story: a Jewish boy who pretended to be an ethnic German to escape being murdered by the Nazis and later got inducted into the Hitler Youth, where he had to hide his Jewishness for the rest of the war. The parting piece of advice he got from his father was, “Always remain a Jew,” while his mother told him, “You must live.”

It seems like contradictory advice, since he had to pretend to be a Nazi in order to survive. But from a Jewish perspective, the advice was actually the same. From Deuteronomy: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse — therefore choose life.”

Maine Writer post script:  This series of conversations published in The New York Times should be required reading for teaching students, and adults about the enjoyment of learning about how to participate in a civil conversations. 

A nation grieves with the Biden family

Very sad news given to the world by a grieving father. A young man who was a promising world leader has died. Our sincere sympathy  to this grieving family.

Beau Biden (left) with his father Vice President Joe Biden

Vice President Joe Biden announced to the world that his son Joseph Robinette "Beau" Biden III, 46, died on Saturday, May 30, 2015, in Bethesda, Maryland.  It's difficult to understand how the Biden family has been dealt such intense bereavement, because Beau was predeceased by his mother and a sister, who were killed in an automobile accident, when he was a toddler.

Mr. Biden III, was an Iraq War veteran who served as the attorney general of Delaware. He died after battling brain cancer, according to the vice president's office.

Biden III and his family faced several traumatic challenges:

When he was only 3, just weeks after his father, Joe Biden, had been elected to the Senate, the younger Biden was seriously injured in a 1972 car crash that killed his mother and infant sister. His father was sworn into office at his hospital bedside.

As a young college student, not long after his father's 1987 presidential campaign imploded among allegations of plagiarism, he was back in the hospital, holding vigil with other family members as Joe Biden underwent surgery for a life-threatening aneurysm.

"Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known," his father wrote in a statement.

Biden had suffered known health problems dating back to 2010, when he experienced a stroke that did not affect his motor skills or speech.

In 2013, Beau Biden was treated at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after he became disoriented and weak while on vacation. He was diagnosed with brain cancer, and after undergoing surgery was given a clean bill of health.

Sadly, the cancer returned this spring and Biden pursued aggressive treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the vice president's office said. He died Saturday evening, surrounded by his extended family.

Aside from Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden, Beau Biden is survived by his wife, Hallie; two children, Natalie and Hunter; a brother, also named Hunter; and a half-sister, Ashley.

He survived the horrible wreck that claimed his mother and sister

Throughout his 2010 and 2013 health episodes, Beau Biden continued serving as Delaware's attorney general, a position to which he was first elected in 2006. A Democrat like his father, he served for two terms, and announced in 2014 he wouldn't seek another four years in office as he prepared a run for governor.

Beau Biden is the second of Joe Biden's children to precede their father in death; the vice president's 1-year-old daughter Naomi was killed in a Christmastime car accident in 1972. The crash also took the life of Joe Biden's first wife, Neilia, who was Beau's mother.

Beau Biden was 2 years old when his mother was killed in the crash. He and his younger brother Hunter were injured but survived the accident, which occurred when a truck careened into the car the family was riding in.

Joe Biden was sworn in as senator at his sons' hospital bedside a few weeks later, and according to the 1988 political biography "What It Takes," by Richard Ben Cramer, the first-term lawmaker threw himself headlong into single parenthood.

"Joe was the parent. Period. No confusion," Cramer wrote. "Joe didn't want anybody else raising his kids, thanks. He was there every night, every weekend. They had stories at bedtime, games of catch on the lawn, outings, trips, places to go."

Beau and Hunter encouraged their father to remarry, and in 1977 Jill Jacoobs, now Jill Biden, wife of the vice president, became their stepmother.

"My mom came along -- I have two moms now -- who came along in 1977 and rebuilt our family, and helped my dad rebuild our family," Beau Biden told CNN in 2012. "She's an incredible mother."

Beau Biden grew up in Delaware and graduated from the same Catholic high school as his father. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania and attended law school at Syracuse University.

He was a prosecutor and a politician. After serving as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Philadelphia for nine years, and briefly working in private practice, Biden won his first election for attorney general in 2006 by 13,000 votes. When he was re-elected in 2010, Beau Biden increased his winning margin to 149,000 votes over his Republican competitor.

During his time in office, Biden took aggressive tactics to tamp down on child sex crimes perpetrators, netting 180 convictions. He also went after banks and mortgage lenders for their roles in perpetrating crooked loans.

A captain in the Delaware Army National Guard, Beau Biden was deployed to Iraq for a year in 2008, serving in an administrative post with the 261st Signal Brigade.

As a campaign surrogate when Joe Biden was selected as Barack Obama's running mate, Beau Biden acted as a fierce partisan, criticizing Republican opponents for lacking what he said was his father's tell-it-like-it-is honesty. His 2012 speech at the Democratic National Convention brought his father to tears.

And while Beau Biden chose to pursue the same field as his father -- from whom he inherited a square jaw and folksy patter -- he claimed in 2010 the pair didn't regularly talk politics.

"Most of the drama doesn't come to our dinner table. We talk about what my kids are doing -- his grandkids -- my brother's three kids, my sister, we talk about the family," he told CNN. "Most of the time it's not about politics."

Beau Biden is the first child of a sitting president or vice president to die since Patrick Bouvier Kennedy passed away two days after his birth in 1963.

On Saturday, Vice President Biden said in his statement, "More than his professional accomplishments, Beau measured himself as a husband, father, son and brother. His absolute honor made him a role model for our family. Beau embodied my father's saying that a parent knows success when his child turns out better than he did."

President Obama, writing in a statement, quoted Irish poet William Butler Yeats -- a favorite of the vice president's -- in honoring Beau Biden's life.

Yeats wrote, "I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best or even a good man swing his lantern higher."

"Beau Biden believed the best of us all," Obama said. "For him, and for his family, we swing our lanterns higher."

Beau Biden is survived by his wife, Hallie, and children Natalie, 11, and Hunter, 9, along with his father and stepmother, a brother and sister, a sister-in-law and brother-in-law, and three nieces.

Funeral arrangements were not announced. Beau Biden is entitled to military funeral honors, said Lt. Col. Len Gratteri, a spokesman for the Delaware National Guard.