"My commitment to you is this: Opinion will continue to be a place where honest debate is elevated, where ideas are pressure-tested. Opinion is and will be a place where our audiences will hear from those with whom they agree and disagree, where they can learn from those whose lives they've never considered, and where they can grapple with the challenges of our changing world. That is our mission." |
A couple weeks ago, after seven months as the interim head of The Times's opinion pages, I was named officially to the job. After the announcement, I wrote the sentences above to my colleagues in Times Opinion. I wanted to share them today because we're trying a new experiment with this edition of the newsletter. |
For several years now, one of my favorite parts of the Opinion report — not least because of the pitch-perfect headlines its editor, Aaron Retica, always manages to write — has been The Conversation, a lively back-and-forth between two of our columnists, Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. The Conversation, like its audio counterpart "The Argument," is a great example of constructive engagement between two people who come from different ends of the political spectrum. |
In the Trump era, Bret and Gail often found themselves agreeing, to be sure, but two recent columns in Times Opinion offer a preview of what may come under President Biden. Columnist Nick Kristof kicked things off with "A Letter to My Conservative Friends" on Jan. 27. Bret gamely followed with his own "Letter to My Liberal Friends" the next Monday. |
But it turned out they had more to say to each other. I hope you enjoy it because this is the type of dialogue, on the biggest questions of the day, that I want Times Opinion to be known for on my watch. |
Bret: Hi, Nick. Thanks for writing such a thought-provoking column (and for giving me this week's column idea). For what it's worth, I pretty much agree with everything you write. The extent to which today's conservative-leaning voters have been taken for a ride by the loony and lying right — Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, being the most obvious case in point — is one big reason I no longer think of myself as a Republican. |
Nick: And I largely agreed with your piece. Democrats need oversight or we'll go off the deep end, as your column's examples from California suggest. You see the same thing periodically in other liberal bastions, such as university departments. |
But I'd add that for now there's no symmetry. Democrats sometimes do stupid things, but much of the G.O.P. has just gone insane. Left-wing members of Congress like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hang out with policy wonks; right-wing members like Greene hang out with "militia" members. I wrote my column after some conservative friends asked me if they would get in trouble under President Biden. I think they had been watching Fox News accounts of liberals planning to drag conservatives off to re-education camps. |
So I deeply believe that we need responsible conservatives to hold my liberal feet to the fire. What we don't need is Trumpism and a news ecosystem bolstered by Fox News and One America News Network that spreads misinformation, sometimes dangerously so. |
But, Bret, let me be clear: If you're dragged off to a re-education camp, I'll send you a cake with a hacksaw inside. |
Bret: Ha! And a Swiss Army Knife while you are at it. Here's my worry: This is a moment when Democrats can capture the center of U.S. politics, precisely because so much of the G.O.P. has — how to put this nicely? — lost the plot. And Joe Biden has the record and temperament to do it, provided he doesn't let himself get captured by his party's progressive wing. That means focusing squarely on middle-class concerns: good jobs, safe streets, sane government. |
Problem is, I don't think Biden can do that if he's listening to the A.O.C.s of his party, no matter what policy wonks she may be speaking to. She stands for a wing of the party that killed Amazon's bid to create thousands of jobs in Queens because it is ideologically hostile to big corporations, which is a bad look for someone who purports to champion the interests of the working class. And my fear is that the principal beneficiaries of her stardom among Democrats will be exactly the kinds of far-right Republicans that are a real threat to our small-d democratic institutions. |
Nick: I somewhat disagree. I do want Biden to think big and go long on policy, and I'm glad he's reading about Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days. I'm delighted that he's pushing the most important plan to fight poverty, especially child poverty, in at least half a century. And many progressive policies have broad popular support — from raising the federal minimum wage to "broadband for all" to national high-quality child care. I hope he pushes for them, even though they're more liberal than centrist. |
But I do share your concern that Democrats will invest their political capital not in fighting child poverty or raising the minimum wage, but in renaming schools in San Francisco — when they should be focused simply on getting those schools open. I was also disheartened by how many Times readers reproached me after my "letter to my conservative friends" for having any conservative friends at all. That's not the path to improving American well-being, and it's certainly not a path to inclusiveness. |
Bret: Amen. And now it's back to the nonpartisan, all-American task of walking my dog. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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