Trading Places, Presidential Edition

Opinion|Trading Places, Presidential Edition

Gail Collins: Bret, this is our last conversation of 2024. We’ll be back in January, as will, um, President Trump. Any new year predictions? Wishes? Desperate hopes?

Bret Stephens: Wishes: A team other than the Chiefs wins the Super Bowl. Prediction: The Chiefs win the Super Bowl.

As for desperate hopes, I guess it would be that Trump 2.0 will prove to be a pleasant surprise. I’m not entirely ruling it out, notwithstanding some, ahem, dubious cabinet picks. How about you?

Gail: I am ruling out being pleasantly surprised. Well, maybe the president-elect will receive a sudden apparition from Frances Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, who will persuade him to make sheltering the poor his top domestic priority. Otherwise, no real hope on my end. Tell me your vision of Pleasant Surprise Donald.

Bret: Trump is a disrupter in a system that needs a lot of disruption. So many things in American life feel broken. Our public schools, which keep getting more money even as they produce worse outcomes. Our byzantine permitting system, which makes it difficult, expensive and almost comically time-consuming to get even the most basic building projects off the ground. Our defense-procurement system, which spends trillions of dollars on a diminishing number of exquisite weapons’ systems that are increasingly vulnerable to inexpensive threats like drones. Our immigration system, which under the Biden administration was overwhelmed by the largest illegal migration surge in our history. The I.R.S., which answers fewer than one out of three phone calls from taxpayers. The criminal-justice system, which rarely nabs a thief.

Point is, we’ve got a 20th-century government straining under the weight of 21st-century challenges. My main quarrel with Trump, other than his personal awfulness and his shaky democratic commitments, is that he’s the wrong answer to the right question — a bomb when we need a hammer.