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The Conversation

When a Politician and a Lawman Try to Play the Hero, the Lawman Usually Wins

Missiles being fired on Damascus, Syria, on Saturday.Credit...Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

Bret Stephens: Gail, I know we need to discuss James Comey’s new book and President Trump’s Twitter neuralgia about it, but I wanted to get your thoughts about the attack in Syria in response to the gas attacks — the suspected gas attacks, I should say — near Damascus.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served as a top adviser in Hillary Clinton’s State Department, said “It will not stop the war” and “is illegal under international law.” Yet she praised it because “it at least draws a line somewhere and says enough.” What do you think?

Gail Collins: There had to be a response, and it had to be one that wouldn’t put Syrian civilians in the line of fire. In a perfect world we’d have been in serious negotiations to try to end the violence before the strike occurred. In a perfect world there wouldn’t have been that presidential chest-thumping. In a perfect world we wouldn’t, for God’s sake, be calling it “Mission Accomplished.”

So I guess I think that given the guy we’ve got in the White House, it was about the best we could have hoped for. How about you?

Bret: I’m surprised to find myself writing this, but I think the strike was a waste of perfectly good cruise missiles. We did nearly the exact same thing last year, and it did nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad from slaughtering his own people and using chemical weapons on them. If we really believe, as I do, that the use of chemical weapons cannot be tolerated, then we can’t allow the guy who used them to come away from the strike unscathed and — given that he’s immediately renewed his offensive in the area — emboldened.

The strike really was classic Trump: A show of force mainly for the sake of show, without any strategy behind it. Iran has entrenched itself in Syria alongside Russia, while Israel is quietly preparing for war on its northern front. The administration looks likely to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal next month, but little thought seems to have been given to what comes after. In all, just another reminder that the Trump disaster is global.

Gail: We’ve been looking for a good argument for so long I really wish I could pitch into this one. But my bottom line is that we’d better avoid any serious conflicts as long as Trump is commander in chief. As to the Iran deal, the whole idea of pulling out of it is so traumatizing that I can’t think of any response except crawling under the bed and assuming a fetal position.

Now, let’s be cowards and talk about domestic issues. Can we start with Paul Ryan? You wrote a wonderful column about what a weenie he’s being by bailing out at this crucial moment. But I think we still disagree about his overall career. I see him as a guy who pretended to be all about balanced budgets but was really always just going for the tax cuts and screw the deficit. Same thing with Bush. Same thing with Reagan. Seems to be a pattern.

Bret: I think your complaint is a tad unfair. If Republicans like Ryan had filibuster-proof control of the Senate, they would likely pass entitlement reform and gleefully take an ax to domestic spending to keep the budget balanced. There aren’t any honest deficit hawks anywhere in American politics — they just want to slash the other guy’s priorities to fund their own. Aren’t most Democrats that way, too? I mean, would you let a deficit stand in the way of Medicare-for-all?

That said, “weenie,” c’est le mot juste. Saturday’s column was about Ryan, but it could just as easily have been about the larger cast of weenies known as the G.O.P., who capitulated to Trumpism faster than you say Vichyssoise. In the long term, it will cost the G.O.P. dearly, especially among younger voters who will remember who stood on the wrong side of history.

Gail: Love the way you do all that French stuff while all I’ve got is “weenie.” Let’s just go one more round on the deficit stuff and then we can collapse into Trump-Comey.

I agree that if Ryan had control of … the world … he would pass a balanced budget with low taxes and slashed entitlements. But the reason he can’t do that isn’t just the Democrats. It’s all his own party members, who are well aware their constituents would go bonkers if they tried to cut Social Security or Medicare. Pretending that’s going to happen is just faking.

Bret: But, but … O.K., you’re right. Regarding the awfulness of the current Republican Party, it isn’t just deep; it’s bottomless. Which is why I’m in sympathy with the deficit non-hawks, people who understand that debt isn’t the worst thing if you’re spending money on the right things, and if your economy is growing smartly.

It would probably be good for our politics in general if we just owned up to the fact that we aren’t going to get our fiscal virginity back and have a real argument about spending priorities rather than a fake one about budgetary virtue. We’re not going to pay down the debt in our lifetimes. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a thriving economy to make sure we’re able to finance it.

Gail: Well, I’m sorry to give up such a fruitful area of argument, but our plan requires we move on.

Bret: What about Comey?

Gail: No question that the president tried to bully him into quashing the whole Russia issue. I really do think we’re talking about obstruction of justice.

So that’s my pro-Comey thought. On the other hand, I came of age during the J. Edgar Hoover period, when the idea of a we-rule-the-world F.B.I. was very scary. And Comey is a self-centric dude who is not the ideal person to run an agency that has so much power.

My third thought is that whenever I mull the Clinton-Comey story, I return to the fact that Anthony Weiner changed the course of American history. Yipes.

Bret: Dammit, Gail. We’re agreeing again.

I was never a Comey fan: I wrote a long editorial for The Wall Street Journal opposing his nomination as F.B.I. director back when Barack Obama appointed him in 2013. Comey’s behavior in 2016 was a long series of legal misjudgments and political blunders that wound up costing Hillary Clinton the election.

Gail: Yeah, if we’d had a Comey-free election, right now you and I would be having good old-fashioned fights about President Clinton’s new health care expansion.

Bret: Right, while I would be praising her decision to oust Assad and target Russian bases.

That said, I fear that Comey is damaging himself — and the credible case he makes against the president — by putting his obvious distaste for Trump into the service of selling his book. It allows Trump and his defenders to paint Comey as disgruntled and self-serving. If Trump is a pig, Comey’s a prig. I wonder who comes out looking better to most Americans in that particular contest.

Gail: When there’s a choice about whether a politician or a lawman is going to get to play the hero, lawman usually wins. I suspect Comey will go down in history as the hero who stood up to a crazy president. Although in a fairer world he’d also be remembered as the guy whose overdramatic press conference got us said president in the first place.

Bret: Agreed again. It’s a drama with few heroes but plenty of knaves and opportunists.

Gail: That’s for sure. We’ll talk again soon, Bret. In the meantime — I don’t normally say this, but I wouldn’t mind a little less news.

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