In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.
David Brooks: Do you mind if I go the narcissistic route and ask you about my own column?
Gail Collins: Column? David, I had no idea you wrote a column. I thought you were just here for the conversation.
David: I wanted to ask you specifically about my contention that New York is in better shape than ever before. I'm in the city about two days a week these days and I've just been amazed by how great the parks are this year, from the Cloisters down to Battery Park.
Gail: I agree the parks are great, although I suspect you're just rediscovering them. They've been terrific for ages. Except for the part where speed demon bicyclists run over pedestrians.
David: I am also amazed by how many great and original stores there are. Have you been to Story, a store on 10th Avenue that changes themes and merchandise around a new narrative every few months? I know we're supposed to bemoan the fact that mom and pop stores have been replaced by CVS and the chains, but let's not romanticize the old days of the mom and pops.
Gail: Sorry, as a person who now lives next door to a Rite Aid, and a stone's throw from two Duane Reades, I am totally in mourning for the mom and pops. How does the economy support so many mega-pharmacies anyway? You'd think the entire population did nothing but fill prescriptions and buy hair spray.
David: My question: Do you think New York is better than ever? I'd say 1910s New York had better radicals. The 1920s had better writers and nightclubs. 1940s New York had better painters, but contemporary New York has better everything else.
Gail: You forgot rents. Every other era in the history of the city had more affordable rents.
Also, I remember many periods with better politics. People seem grumpily disengaged. Maybe it's because this year's big race involves choosing between Andrew Cuomo and A Person Named Rob.
David: The cities are wonderful. I was just in Philadelphia, and it was the same. The dead parts of town now have vibrant restaurants. In D.C., middle-class neighborhoods like Brookland are sprouting bars, coffee shops and other gathering spots. Even Detroit has restaurants like Slows Bar-B-Q, which are destination restaurants in the middle of urban wastelands.
Gail: This has been a long time coming. I remember when I was in college and everybody was worried about the death of the cities. I heard a speaker – it might actually have been Saul Alinsky – predict that the cities would be saved not by government action, but by people deciding it was more convenient and fun to live there. And it really is, especially if you're young or old.
David: I don't think this is just a gentrification phenomenon. It's like there's been a leap in the quality of American aesthetics. People have better taste and demand more. Meanwhile, McDonald's is losing customers at the moment, especially among people in their 20s.
Gail: I love the idea that McDonald's is slipping due to aesthetics. But I would feel more inclined to embrace your theory if I could see one fewer Duane Reade from my corner.
David: I'm trying to focus on the positive these days. Somebody gave me good advice recently. The world is divided between glass-half-full people and glass-half-empty people. It's also divided between givers and takers. When you are choosing a spouse or a friend, you want a glass-half-full giver. You definitely do not want a half-empty-glass taker.
Gail: Can I send a shout-out to my spouse? He is definitely a giver. Also, the other night I heard him tell someone: "Marriage becomes truly happy when you stop trying to change your mate." So I'd say go for a glass-half-full, giver, nonchanger.
David: Personally, I'd befriend any dichotomizer. You have probably heard me say that the world is divided between two types of people, those who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't. I'm definitely the former. Every virtue has its vice. Every situation has its paradox.
Gail: I am tempted to divide everything into threes, but I have a feeling you're taking us somewhere else.
David: Yes, that brings me to the pivot. A few years ago, the Obama administration decided to favor the positive over the negative. U.S. policy would pivot from places where bad news dominates (the Middle East) to places where good news dominates (Asia). To tell you the truth, I never understood the pivot. We have some diplomats who focus on the Middle East and some people who focus on Asia. Why can't we pay attention to both regions at once? A country is not like a person; it doesn't have to pivot, pirouette or fox trot. It can do a lot simultaneously.
Gail: I always thought it was just a way to say, "We're going to try to avoid the Middle East but still provide enough work to keep the State Department off the streets."
David: Regardless, the administration has completely failed to pull off the pivot. Obama keeps getting pulled into the Middle East. This is the paradox of power. The most powerful person on earth doesn't get to choose what he'll think about each day.
Gail: I know I've told you this before, but I'm convinced it's the story of the modern presidency. Whoever sits in the Oval Office spends every morning going over reports about people who are planning to kill American civilians. And no matter what they say when they come into office, the terror of another 9-11 is going to wind up obsessing them and turn them into interventionists abroad.
I don't necessarily believe it's the right assessment, but I suspect the transformation is inevitable.
David: I guess I'd say when planning a career you should focus on your strengths, but when running a government, your job is to focus on places where things are going wrong. Political leaders have limited power to make the world noble. They have some power to prevent the world from becoming miserable. Their job is not to make things great. It is to prevent things from being terrible — so that people in the private world will have the context they need to make things great.
It's like being a cop. You just have to congregate in bad situations. In politics the highs are not as high as the lows are low. The downside risk is always bigger than the upside risk.
Gail: Yeah, that's true. You have to focus on the problem spots. But that still leaves the question of what you do. Stay out of it, strengthen homeland security, and try to encourage international sanctions against the bad guys? Or actually intervene militarily?
David: How do you think Obama is doing at preventing the Middle East from being completely miserable? I was surprised by how gigantic the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS seems to be. Do you think it will work?
Gail: Work? As in reduce violence in the region and end the threat of terrorist attacks at home? No, sadly, I don't think it'll work.
David: I guess my view is that Obama will have to ramp up the operation quite a lot over the next couple of years. Not a big invasion, obviously, but something much more aggressively designed to dislodge ISIS from the cities. I suspect he'll do this, and the beneficiary will be his successor, not him.
I think this a lot about Obama. I think the economy is finally going to take off as corporations unleash their cash over the next few years. I think the Middle East will evolve away from its jihadist phase to something more orderly if not exactly democratic. The next president will have it easy compared to B.H.O. Oh well, them's the breaks.
Gail: I agree that we won't remember this president for foreign policy. They gave the Nobel Peace Prize to the wrong guy. It'll be the next administration, or the one after, who puts an end to the era George W. Bush started in Iraq. But the history books will celebrate Barack Obama as the president who grabbed the economy by the collar and saved the country from another Great Depression.
He will also be remembered as the president who finally, after 100 years of struggle, created a national health care system. Which is huge, just huge. And which gives me a chance to end on an optimistic note — to raise my half-full glass.
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