In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.
Gail Collins: David, I was pretty confident that the United States had Ebola under control until the other day, when it appeared policy-making had devolved to Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie. Chris Christie, who can’t keep bridge traffic moving. Andrew Cuomo, who failed to get his 2012 flu shot until 2013.
David Brooks: This is why we’re a republic and not a democracy. People running for office should not be making science policy. By the way, I’ve been against quarantines and overreaction through this whole thing, but there was a piece in The New Republic a few weeks ago that sobered me. Steven Beutler, an infectious disease specialist, was arguing for a maximalist response. Here’s one core point: “Medicine can be a very humbling profession, and after more than 30 years of practicing infectious-disease medicine, I have learned that the ‘unanticipated’ happens all too often, especially where microbes are involved.”
Gail: Do you think the Ebola hysteria will have any effect on next week’s election? There’s been a lot of complaint about the administration’s ineptitude. But I think the message on Ebola, at least, has been the opposite. Ebola in the United States began deep in the heart of Texas, a state whose health care system is so estranged from the federal government it refuses to accept the opportunity to get its millions of uninsured residents covered under Obamacare.
David: Your love of all things Texas is well known. But you have to admit a few things about the place. It is economically vibrant beyond all reckoning. Houston and Dallas are exploding economically while the rest of the country dawdles.
Gail: Texas is the last gasp of the Sunbelt boom. It has all the advantages of warm weather, plus an enormous amount of space which makes housing stupendously cheap. It could have done just as well without being politically crazy.
But we were talking about Ebola.
David: As for Ebola and the election, my pretentious theory is that Ebola is the objective correlative of the campaign.
Gail: You’re using big words again.
David: If I remember high school English correctly, an “objective correlative” is an object that gives explicit access to the meaning of vague and insubstantial things, like a mood or an emotion. It’s an object that correlates to a mood or emotion or idea. T.S. Eliot made it famous writing about Hamlet.
Anyway, the country was already afraid. It felt like the people running things were not quite up to the job. Along comes a disease to perfectly embody that vague sense. That said, I don’t think Ebola is swinging too many votes. People are just sour and they are disappointed with the president.
Gail: It certainly has been a tough season for President Obama. But before we start blaming him for anything bad that happens next Tuesday, I would like to give him a shout-out for that hug-the-Ebola-nurse photo. Which allows us to recall that when AIDS hit the United States in 1981, President Ronald Reagan was criminally useless. Never said a word. As Laura Helmuth noted in Slate this week, Reagan’s press secretary made fun of the idea that the president would ever consider speaking out.
David: I totally agree with you on that one. It’s not in the president’s job description to be the professional emoter and behavior model, but when he can display some truth by example, he might as well do it.
Gail: I know I’m preparing my defenses in advance of next week. But I think the American people have been saying they want an effective government, not a smaller government. All the candidates are promising they’re going to end gridlock, but if there’s anything we’ve learned since Obama was elected, it’s that you don’t end gridlock by sending more Tea Party types to Washington.
David: I guess I think it is more generalized than that. They just don’t trust government to get the job done. At least the federal government. I’m struck by how amazingly stable polling has been on the Affordable Care Act. Democrats in swing states don’t try to defend it. They just promise to fix it. The relatively good news on the health care front over the past year has done nothing to change minds.
Gail: I find it sort of fascinating that the Republican Senate nominee in Iowa, who previously said she’d support a law to have federal officials arrested for attempting to implement Obamacare, is marketing herself as the “Iowa nice” candidate who can work across the aisle.
David: I find it shocking that Iowans should steal Minnesota’s slogan. Minnesota is the nice state. Missouri is the skeptical state. New Jersey is the brash state. Iowa should be the quiet state.
In her defense I think it is possible to arrest federal officials nicely. We call it compassionate conservatism.
Gail: O.K., this is the point at which we’re morally obliged to start making predictions. What’s yours?
David: I say this with no great confidence, but I’m guessing the Republicans pick up eight seats. I think the biggest surprise will be a G.O.P. win in Georgia.
Gail: That would make me sad, if only because Michelle Nunn has run such a good race and her opponent has been so terrible. It just seems unjust.
My guess is that we’re not going to know who gets control of the Senate for a while. Some state is going to be so close there’ll be a recount. And Alaska takes forever to just get the ballots together. Plus Georgia and Louisiana, which will probably go to runoffs, since they require their senators to get a majority of the vote.
David: Great! Why shouldn’t the decade’s most content-less campaign go into overtime? I’m sort of amazed that this election hasn’t been about jobs and the economy. It hasn’t been about anything but a sort of fatalism.
Gail: There’s something about the idea of the fate of the nation hanging on Louisiana that makes me very nervous. I still remember being down there in 1991, covering the gubernatorial runoff between the Ku Klux Klan wizard David Duke and the deeply corrupt ex-governor Edwin Edwards. The Edwards supporters had those bumper stickers saying: “Vote for the Crook.” Which, blessedly, the people did.
David: I’ll take an effective crook over an ineffective honest person any day.
Gail: I should mention that at age 87, Edwards is running for the House of Representatives this year. After getting out of jail, marrying a woman 51 years younger, and starring in a reality TV series. You can’t say Louisiana isn’t interesting. And if there’s a runoff at least then we’d be able to spend part of the winter in New Orleans. So much better than next year, when we’ll be spending it in Des Moines.
David: I was just in New Orleans last week. I love every street in that city except Bourbon Street, which is filled with terrible pizza places, extremely drunk idiots and teenagers mortified to be walking with their parents.
Gong there makes me want to reread my favorite political novel of all time, Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men.” Trollope’s “Phineas Finn” is second.
And don’t knock Des Moines. Silence is golden.
Gail: What’s the state you’re following most closely? I have to admit Kansas is pretty darned fascinating. If the Republicans have to ferry in any more old party stalwarts to shore up Senator Pat Roberts, they’ll be resurrecting Alf Landon.
I got a twinge watching Bob Dole campaign so vigorously for Roberts. Do you remember in 2012 when Dole was sitting in the Senate, in his wheelchair, watching his friends refuse to ratify the United Nations treaty on people with disabilities? Which was based, of course, on the signature bill Dole got passed in 1990 when he was in the Senate.
David: Somebody should please explain to me why senators don’t ever want to retire. What’s fun about attending Ag Committee hearings when you are 84? Maybe the napping opportunities.
Gail: I talked with Dole after the treaty vote, and he kept coming back to the fact that both of the Republican Senators from Kansas had voted against ratification. But there’s Roberts now, in a deep ditch because he took his constituents so much for granted he didn’t even bother to pretend he lived in their state. Dole clearly has a much deeper sense of loyalty.
David: I once went to the Dole center in Kansas. They’ve got a sort of museum display about his life. The thing that moved me most was the exercise equipment he used to build himself back into shape after his war injury. He had wasted away to nothing and had to build himself all the way back. Then I got to see the basement where they keep all the presents he had been given by foreign dignitaries during his Senate years. There were carpets, saddles, baseball bats. People give politicians portraits of themselves. I guess that’s called knowing your subject.
Gail: It’s interesting how many elections there are this year where voters seem to despise both candidates. If Floridians were any more alienated by their governor’s race, they’d have been bringing alligators to the debates.
David: I don’t think Floridians should be angry or alienated. It doesn’t suit them. Among other things, it doesn’t go with their pastels.
Gail: I don’t want anybody to imagine that I’m making fun of other states because of my deep satisfaction with New York. Nothing is more humbling than spending a season covering New York politics. Where the phrase “not yet indicted” is regarded as a compliment.
David: If Minnesota is nice and Iowa is quiet, what should New York be: Pompous? Narcissistic? I say this lovingly. It is my state too.
Gail: Last question. Is there anything about this election that’s really surprised you? I didn’t expect to see so much of Mitt Romney on the campaign trail. Do you think he’s actually interested in running again? They say third time’s a charm.
David: Trust me. He isn’t running. I think his wife sort of ruled that out. That documentary released after the election revealed him to be an authentically warm and nice guy. If there are three things that don’t seem to work in politics these days it’s authenticity, niceness and warmth. Doesn’t fit the national mood.