"Kinda worried the Democrats are so thrilled with the sudden transformation from Biden to Harris they won’t be as obsessed as they ought to be."

Said Gail Collins in this week's "Conversation" with Bret Stephens.

The next thing Bret Stephens said is "Tim Walz’s football analogy about Democrats having the ball and driving down the field while they’re down by a field goal was a good metaphor." How is that a good analogy? Didn't Walz intend us to think of a game with only a few seconds left?

In any case, in politics both teams have to worry about offense and defense at the same time. You can do either or both whenever you want. But this convention felt like a big sugar high. That's the metaphor that comes to mind for me. A big spike of energy, but then what? That's what Collins is "kinda worried" about. We need some substance, and the "sudden transformation" people are adamantly denying us substance... and I'm getting hangry.

Ah, I see Bret Stephens comes in with another metaphor... about that insipid "joy" theme:

But as our colleague Patrick Healy pointed out in an astute essay, “Joy is not a strategy.” Actually, it’s more like a helium balloon that rises and rises — until it deflates and crumples....

"Why is the political right so hostile to Ukraine?"

"It seems like the kind of freedom-fighting, Western-tilting country they’re supposed to adore."

Asks Gail Collins, in "The Conversation" at the NYT.

Her interlocutor, Bret Stephens, answers:

Our colleague David French offered what I think is the smartest answer to your question in a recent column. It comes down to this: general nuttiness connected to sundry Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden conspiracy theories, plus a belief that Putin (a former K.G.B. agent) somehow represents manly Christian values in the face of effeminate wokeness, plus a kind of George Costanza 'do the opposite' mentality in which whatever Biden is for, they must be against."

"I don’t quite understand all of these Democrats who say Trump is an existential threat to decency, democracy and maybe life on the planet and then..."

"... insist they’re sticking with Biden instead of another candidate. It’s like refusing to seek better medical care for a desperately sick child because the family doctor is a nice old man whose feelings might get hurt if you left his practice."

Said Bret Stephens, in "The Conversation," with Gail Collins, in "The Election No One Seems to Want Is Coming Right at Us" (NYT).

Collins responds that "he’s done a good job" and his speech on Friday showed "he’s going to campaign against Trump very, very, very hard."

That gets Stephens to blithely/deviously quip: "Well, let’s hope it doesn’t kill him.

"A struggle ensued, with the crocodile attempting to pull Deveraux into the billabong, while Deveraux in turn, he said, tried to kick the creature..."

"... with his left foot. He was pulled deeper into the water and onto his knees. Then, in a move he described as 'half-accidental,' his teeth caught on the animal's leathery eyelid. 'I managed to have a bite,' he said, adding: 'I jerked back on his eyelid and he let go.'"

From "Crocodile Bites Man. Man Bites Back. A surprising tale of Northern Territory chutzpah" (NYT).

I'm reading that because it comes up in the dialogue between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, a regular Monday morning feature in the NYT. Collins brings up the crocodile story because it reminds her of the GOP presidential candidates who are stuck fighting Donald Trump. 

Collins, like a lot of people in elite media these days, are pushing the idea of Nikki Haley as the one who ought to take on Donald Trump. But why? 

The Collins/Stephens dialogue begins with Stephens saying he's been "devoted almost entirely to outrages and tragedies in the Middle East: 

But I couldn’t help smiling for a second when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” at last week’s G.O.P. debate, after he raised the subject of her daughter’s use of TikTok.

"Moderate and sane, but also cutting and sharp, particularly when it came to her vivisection of Vivek Ramaswamy’s neo-isolationist, Putin-kowtowing foreign policy."

Such violent imagery from Bret Stephens, describing Nikki Haley, in "Vivek Ramaswamy Is Suddenly Part of Our Political Life," the regular "conversation" at the NYT between Stephens and Gail Collins. I assume the conversation is in writing, because no one could speak spontaneously like that.

The "vivisection" play on the name Vivek must have seemed too delightful to pass up. And yet I would feel compelled to edit out metaphorical violence aimed at a particular individual. Does Nikki Haley even want to be portrayed as a woman who cuts up men?

Collins says: "Wow, is he irritating. Not many people I can think of who I’d rather have over for dinner less than Donald Trump, but this guy’s one of them."

"I talked with Nader about his role much later, and he basically said the outcome was Gore’s fault for being a bad candidate."

"This conversation took place when the country was bearing down on the 2016 election, and Nader vowed not to vote for either Trump or Clinton. 'They’re not alike,' he acknowledged, but added, 'they’re both terrible.' Think that was the last time I ever consulted Ralph Nader."

Writes Gail Collins in "Repulsed by Biden vs. Trump? Tough" (NYT).

I said it a week ago: All I can think of is rooting for Bobby and Vivek.

And:

It was bad enough to go through the 2020 campaign once and it's bad to go through any presidential campaign twice, but to go through the 2020 campaign twice is just such an outrage. Why aren't people kicking and screaming as we're dragged into this?!

Gail Collins belabors what, of course, I already knew was the answer to my question. Just put up with the disgusting reality that we've got 2 parties, they do their thing, and you obediently vote for the better of the 2, even though Ralph was right and they're both terrible. 

CORRECTION: This post originally had Ruth Marcus for Gail Collins. I need to think about why I'd merged these 2 writers!

"[I]f we were able to more-or-less end teenage cigarette smoking over the last 20 years, it shouldn’t be out of the question to try to do the same with social-media use."

Says Bret Stephens, a NYT conservative columnist, in conversation with Gail Collins, a NYT liberaI columnist. 

Collins agrees and says she's "happy to insist" that Apple prevent the download of social-media apps to phones known to be used by teenagers.

Stephens asserts that "most teenagers" would "welcome" this exclusion from social media.

It’s hard enough being 14 or 15 without needing to panic about some embarrassing Instagram pic or discovering too late that something stupid or awful you wrote on Facebook or Twitter at 16 comes back to haunt you at 20.... We owe it to the kids to shield them from creating public records of their own indiscretions and idiocies. Life will come roaring at them soon enough. I say no social media till they’re old enough to vote, smoke and maybe even buy a drink. Full-frontal stupidity should be left to the grown-ups — like us!

You can see he thinks he's cute... just delightful. So blithely depriving teenagers of freedom of speech. Not even a word about freedom, just safety and protection, and no insight whatsoever into what you are teaching young people these days or awareness of what they will think of you and your repression of them and the values you crudely imposed.

Speaking of wearing blinders... in another part of this rambling but short conversation, they talk about the accomplishments of Jimmy Carter, and Stephens says, "Made air travel affordable to middle-class America for the first time," then barrels on to the next subject. I know this column is supposed to be jaunty, moving swiftly from one topic to the next, but it made me stop and think of the topic the good-thinkers always think about except when they don't: Global warming.

Isn't Jimmy Carter a major villain in the story of anthropogenic climate change? 

"Last week, in a conversation with colleague Gail Collins, [Bret] Stephens argued that a couple with a combined income of $400,000 a year doesn’t necessarily have a lifestyle we’d describe as 'rich.'"

"'They’re scrimping to send their kids to college, driving a Camry, if they have a car at all, and wondering why eggs have gotten so damned expensive.' 'Granted,' said Collins, which was the most fascinating part of this exchange.... How have liberals gotten so comfortable with the idea that $400,000 a year — more than what 98 percent of the population makes — is really just a middle-class income?..."

Writes Megan McArdle in "The $400K conundrum: Why America’s urban rich don’t feel that way" (WaPo).

"If, God forbid, Trump runs and wins in 2024, the first thing he’ll do is find any pretext to prosecute Joe Biden, and then it’s off to the races."

Says Bret Stephens, in the context of a conversation — with Gail Collins at the NYT — about what Merrick Garland ought to do about maybe prosecuting Trump. 

Gail Collins responds:

Well, if I wanted to make sure the reputation of Merrick Garland didn’t suffer, I’d prosecute rather than risk being remembered as the guy who wimped out. And as a matter of principle … well, gee.

Is "wimped out" something we're still allowed to say?  Why not "I’d prosecute rather than risk being remembered as a pussy"? Where's the line these days? You're allowed to impugn a man's masculinity with... which words?* Or are we moving toward regarding all the once-gendered words as nonbinary?

Stephens inserts: 

Kellyanne Conway "depicts Trump as a feminist who repeatedly supported and promoted her, allowing her to make history as the first woman..."

"... to manage a winning presidential campaign. 'Donald Trump had elevated and empowered me to the top of his campaign, helping me crack glass ceilings that had never even been dinged before,' she writes, adding that 'angry feminists' should “have at least once in their lives a "girl boss" as generous, respectful, engaging, and empowering as Donald Trump was to me and my other female colleagues.'"

From "In new book, Kellyanne Conway takes aim at many targets — except Trump Part personal chronicle and part political journey, the book is filled with the sorts of barbed one-liners and bon mots that she dispensed on cable news" by Ashley Parker (WaPo). 

Also:

In the waning days of his presidency, Conway also writes that, during a discussion with Trump on pardons and clemency, he turned to her and asked, “Do you want one?” 

“Do you know something I don’t?” Kellyanne asked Trump, she writes. “Why would I need a pardon?” 

“Because they go after everyone, honey. It doesn’t matter,” Trump replied, according the book.

They go after everyone....

The top-rated comment over there is:

"Why would anyone care what this lying harpy has to say? An admitted dispenser of 'alternative facts' her screechy voice made her an assault on both eyes and ears."

That gets some feminist pushback: 

"I detest her but your comment reeks of ugly misogyny. The term harpy and pointing out her voice for special loathing. It's possible to find someone detestable without venting sexism." 

And:

"Logged on to say the same thing. Harpy and screechy voice are sexist as hell. Men do this often. I’m no fan of hers, but it’s because of her placating TFG and being a phenomenal hypocrite. Stay away from physical attributes next time."

I had to google "TFG." The first hit is a Gail Collins column in the NYT, published February 17, 2021 — "Trump’s Dreaded Nickname": 

Sitting in disgraced, double-impeached political purgatory, Trump has been trying to retrain the world to refer to him as “the 45th president” during his unwelcome retirement. (If you are lucky enough to get a mass email from him, the return address will be “45 office.”) How cool would it be if he had to sit in front of the TV listening to people talk about “the former guy?” 

D.J.T. = T.F.G.

Perhaps the "dreaded nickname" caught on in some quarters, but I don't remember hearing it before. Collins's dream of what would be cool was not to be. We still hear Trump, Trump, Trump, and it's only going to get louder as we move into the 2024 election season which the disgraced, double-impeached Trump already dominates.

"By the way: Did you read The Times’s account of the government’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax and foreign-business affairs?"

Bret Stephens asks Gail Collins in their conversation in the New York Times, "It’s Never a Good Time for the Hunter Biden Story." The transcript continues:

Bret: The news here has less to do with Hunter himself and more with the fact that those emails recovered from the discarded laptop were his, despite the best efforts by Twitter and other social media and news media companies to bury or not look closely enough at that fact on the eve of the 2020 election.

Gail: I’m so glad our colleagues are still doing strong reporting on this story — Hunter Biden’s scummy business dealings shouldn’t be swept under the rug any more than anyone else’s.

Did Collins just admit that her colleagues were,  at one time, sweeping it under the rug? Or does "still doing strong reporting on this story" preclude that interpretation? Stephens had some careful locution himself: Was the NYT part of the "best efforts... to bury or not look closely enough"? He leaves a loophole. Maybe it was those other "news media companies."

"Someone told me — it might have been you — that Harris is warm and funny in person. But she’s a lousy politician..."

"... and it showed when she flamed out of the Democratic primary before the Iowa caucus. Fixing the border is not mission impossible. It requires a mix of tough-minded security provisions of the sort past Democratic administrations were willing to put into place; ambitious legislative proposals to create broader avenues for legal immigration; a willingness to accept 'Remain in Mexico' as an interim policy provided we help the Mexican government ensure humane conditions for migrants; and long-term security and economic assistance for troubled Latin American states."

Said Bret Stephens to Gail Collins, in "Welcome to the ‘Well, Now What?’ Stage of the Story" (NYT).

Collins responds: "We could have an argument about some of your details, but it seems sort of silly to pick a fight over the administration’s position on Mexico when there doesn’t always seem to be one."

Silly? Why is that silly?! I'd say it's desperately serious, and it's ridiculous to allow the absence of a position to avoid the question whether it's possible to take a good position. 

Collins and Stephens do seem to agree that the Democrats need a 2024 candidate who is not Biden and not Harris. That is, Stephens excludes Biden and Harris, and Collins proceeds directly to sorting through the possible candidates. She names Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. She says when she tried to remember the name Buttigieg, her brain served up the name Peter Bogdanovich. Stephens says his brain did a similar thing: He wanted to say Gina Raimondo, but his first grope for the name got him to Gina Lollobrigida.

 

There's some old-school politics for you.

"Rudy Giuliani says driving Cuomo out of office would be 'unjust, dangerous and entirely un-American.' People, do you think this is because..."

".... A) Giuliani just wants to see Cuomo suffer through a long, painful impeachment. B) Giuliani made the remark at a party after several tumblers of scotch. C) Giuliani thinks it’ll help his son Andrew’s chances to be governor. Yeah, yeah, it’s A. Well, very possibly all three. But short of Rudy, Cuomo does seem to need all the help he can get. He’s been trying to defend himself by showing pictures where he’s kissing and hugging lots of people who seem perfectly happy with the attention. Of course, some are elderly fans who were standing in line waiting for it. Others, like, say, Al Gore, seem … not transported."

Writes NYT columnist Gail Collins, in "What Makes Cuomo So Grabby?" 

A disgusting headline by the way. Are we supposed to care about the internal workings of his mind? Ah, I guess they did that with Trump, diagnosing him with narcissism and whatever, though that never seemed like an honest exploration of human psychology. It was always political attack and therefore a perversion of the field of psychology. Is it any different with Cuomo?

Oh! Now I've read the column, and I don't think it answers or even asks that question in the headline! Looking for what could possibly justify the headline, I'm at a loss. "His private life seems to be a little — wanting" — that is, he's divorced and his girlfriend left town. Albany is "a somewhat isolated world." And there's a gender imbalance "in the power structure." It's almost like saying boys will be boys. What the hell? Who wrote that headline?

But, yeah, forget that. Let's all kick Giuliani. That's how you pad this column. But what I'd like to know is not why Cuomo would commit so many acts of sexual harassment for so long, but who knew and who protected him? Presumably, there are a lot of New York Democrats who've protected Cuomo over the years, probably people who made sanctimonious pro-woman statements in the heyday of the "Me Too" movement. Tell me about them. Instead you wheel out a convenient Republican.

And by the way, the phrase "so grabby" — in "What Makes Cuomo So Grabby?" — trivializes sexual harassment in the workplace. It makes it sound like Cuomo is just childishly uncontrolled in the hands. But sexual harassment is a mechanism of power, structuring the workplace for the benefit of men and relegating women to a separate track, where success and failure depend on things other than work. Start taking it seriously.

"Blood bath."

I'm reading "Has Trump Drawn the Water for a ‘Republican Blood Bath’?/And if he has, what should Biden do with his first term?" (NYT), a conversation between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, which ends:

Bret: Oh, and speaking of the Senate: Did you hear Nebraska’s Ben Sasse tear into Trump during that phone call with his constituents? Too little, too late, in my view, though it’s always nice to hear what Republicans really think of their favorite president. 

Gail: Yeah, thanks to Sasse we can point to a sitting senator from his own party who accused him of screwing up the coronavirus crisis, cozying up to dictators and white supremacists and drawing the water for a “Republican blood bath.” Can’t get much better than that. Catch you again next week, Bret. God knows what will have happened by then.

I'm thinking — do you draw water for a blood bath? Just taking the metaphor seriously — and I'll put to the side the violence of the imagery — isn't the liquid for a blood bath blood? 

A "blood bath" is, in its oldest figurative meaning, according to the OED, "A battle or fight at which much blood is spilt; a wholesale slaughter, a massacre." Figurative in the sense of "bath." The blood is real blood. That goes back to 1843. The fully figurative meaning — "A dramatic loss or heavy defeat" — with both the bath and the blood as metaphor — is traced back only to 1967. 

Strangely enough, there is a nonmetaphorical meaning that predates all that — "A bath in warm blood taken as a tonic or form of medical treatment"! 

1834 London Med. Gaz. 22 Feb. 813 (heading) On blood-baths... According to a dark tradition,..the ancient kings of Egypt used to bathe in human blood when they were seized with leprosy. 

1895 Cincinnati Med. Jrnl. May 380/2 Although French doctors do not often prescribe these forms of treatment, ‘blood baths’ are not infrequently used....

I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can take a blood bath to cure the coronavirus. You know? If you could? And maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Again, I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor. Have you ever heard of that? 

"[Sandra Day] O’Connor... retired at 75 to spend more time with her husband, John. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease..."

"... and O’Connor wanted to make his last years as full of companionship and good times as possible. But there wasn’t any time. John O’Connor deteriorated much faster than his wife had expected. 'John was in such bad shape she couldn’t keep him at home,' [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg told me. It was a lesson, maybe, in how even the noblest motives aren’t always enough reason to throw in the towel. Ginsburg kept fighting and working... When she was old and frequently sick she still kept on keeping on. Her worries about problems with naming a successor were real. But there was also just the way she lived her life...."

From "Ruth Bader Ginsburg Knew What to Do With Her Time/But she also knew something about the unreliability of happy endings" by Gail Collins (NYT).

"Noble" is the right word for what Justice O'Connor did, and seeing what happened, it's hard not to think she made the wrong choice, that — to use Collins's crude expression — she didn't have "enough reason to throw in the towel." But a choice like that is made in its time, without knowledge of the future. You can't look at what happened next when you calculate whether there was "enough reason."

And even when you look at the decision based on the knowledge that the decisionmaker had at the time, you can't know whether there was reason enough without knowing what only Justice O'Connor knew, the depth and the meaning of her love for her husband. To look from a distance and say she misjudged... there's no nobility in that.

Ginsburg "kept fighting" — and "throw in the towel" comes from boxing, where an actual towel was thrown down to signal defeat. But her beloved husband was already gone, and it was her own illness. There was no parallel way that O'Connor could have fought on. She had to choose whether to give her time to her husband. Ginsburg could no longer give time to her husband.

It's not that one woman "knew what to do with her time" — to use the words in the headline — and the other did not. Neither faced the choice that the other faced, and neither should be regarded as more of a fighter or more noble. 

"Plague, fire, economic collapse and the daily reminder that we have a president who isn’t qualified to be head of a local block association … Come on, give me some happy headlines."

That's how Gail Collins begins her conversation with Bret Stephens in "Let’s Fret the Night Together/The Biden campaign and the world it’s playing out in are making us all nervous wrecks" (NYT).

Notice what's not on the list: "Plague, fire, economic collapse and [Trump]." Collins doesn't mention the riots! Sometimes a choice not to say a thing makes it more obvious than if you quietly mixed it in on a list.

I'll read the conversation anyway. At least the headline acknowledges anxiety about Biden.

I'll summarize. Stephens seems to interpret Collins's request for good news as a desire for reassurance that Biden will win. Stephens tortures her with the reminder that the polls were wrong in 2016, and his intuition is that Trump will win. He invites her to "tell me I’m wrong." And all she has is "You're wrong."

Pressed for some substance, she says Trump represented change in 2016 and now he doesn't. Stephens points out that Biden is an ancient Washington fixture, like Mondale and Dole.

Collins switches to complaining about the Electoral College — an old topic and something that has absolutely zero to do with the list of things that "are making us all nervous wrecks." It's more of a retreat into a fantasy world. It's like bellyaching that women have the vote. Or musing about the superiority of a "philosopher king."

They fret about the potential for a contested outcome. Wouldn't a big landslide be nice, saving us from a disturbing battle? They talk about the level of landslide needed to make Trump and his supporters stand down. But what will it take to make the Biden side accept a Trump victory? Did they ever accept the 2016 Trump victory? I think not.

Collins and Stephens muse about what it would take for Biden to "turn this into a romp." Stephens observes that the Woodward bombshell fizzled. He utters the sentence, "What works best against Trump is mockery, not moral thunder." As if there's some mockery of Trump left to be mocked. He's survived it all and responded with better mockery. He's probably the best mocker who's ever existed in the history of the United States, that I can tell you.

Collins says she'd like Biden to challenge Trump to a push-up competition again. It would be "an excellent reminder that whenever the president tries to depict Biden as old and doddering, we’re talking about a physically fit 77-year-old whose age is being attacked by an out-of-shape 74-year-old." Hey, Gail, the worry with Biden isn't about physical strength. It's about the brain.

Bret piles on "'Out-of-shape' is putting it delicately." I'm just about to do an image search on Stephens and Collins. Are they fat? Whether they are or not, most Americans are. Body-shaming is out of touch with America. Doesn't mean I didn't do that image search. Here: Collins and Stephens. Why should I read them if they are — or one of them is — not physically fit? Oh, and isn't there something Hitler-y about this demand for physical fitness?

After this, the conversation goes nowhere. They mention the upcoming debates and recommend trying to relax by watching football, going for walks, and having a dog.

"Bret, you’re the perfect Biden pitchman. Really, you deserve a statue."

Said Gail Collins to Bret Stephens in "Is Statue-Toppling a Monumental Error?/Where you place yourself along the vanguard-to-vandals spectrum says a lot about how you see the past — and the future" (NYT).

Here's Stephens's perfect pitch:

If Bernie Sanders had been the nominee, I’d be writing in someone’s name.... But the idea that a Biden presidency would be a threat to the Republic is laughable: It would be a return to politics as we used to know it before the proverbial sacking of Rome.

My pitch to the Romneys and Boltons of the world is simple: In order for their vision of sane conservatism to win, Trump’s insane vision must lose so decisively that it will be politically destroyed and morally repudiated by the broad majority of Republicans themselves. The bigger Biden’s margin of victory in November, the better it will be for normal conservatives in future Novembers. A vote for Biden now is a vote for a G.O.P. that has a future — in a country that has a future.

Illustration of the Trump presidency, from the mind of Bret Stephens:



I know you can't unscramble an omelette, but can you unsack a Rome?

ADDED: The painting is "Genseric sacking Rome," by Karl Briullov, found at the Wikipedia page "Sack of Rome (455)." It's a 19th century painting and the artist was a Russian, so view the racial characterizations in that context. The Vandals were Germanic people who came from the area that is now Poland.

"Last year Biden told some college students that if only he and Trump were in high school together, 'I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.'"

"At the time, I wrote a column about the inadvisability of advocating an assault on the president, even in the past tense. And the next day Biden called up to say thanks 'for showing me what a jerk I was.' See, this is the reason people keep saying they love Joe Biden. Right before they say they hope he doesn’t run for president."

Writes Gail Collins in "The Biden Sort-Of Lovefest" (NYT).

The second-highest-ranked comment:

Not sure who you are talking to, but being a female of a certain age with friends all over the country in their 50s 60s and 70s, we to a person want Joe to run. We are outraged at the political hit that's being perpetrated by opponents and see it clearly for what it is. We've all taken a deep interest in politics over the years and have a good grasp of issues and are immune to shiny objects waved in front of us. We want to beat Trump. This does not mean that if a better candidate emerges at some point we would not change our minds. But we need Joe to run.

It is a political hit.

I'm not a Joe Biden fan. I thought he was loathsome in the 2012 VP debate with Paul Ryan (live-blogged here ("Ryan is speaking earnestly about preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and Biden is chuckling toothily, his body shaking like Santa Claus")). And I'm a longtime opponent of sexual harassment (and kept true to the position even when Bill Clinton, the first person I ever voted for for President who won, got accused of it). But this hit job has made me sympathetic to Joe. I'm surprised how distinct and strong my emotional reaction is.

The NYT struggles to cheer up the anti-Trumpsters with "Bad Times in Trumpville."

Bad times? How can that be?

Gail Collins writes:

I know some of you were very sad about the way the Mueller report let Donald Trump off the hook. Even if you secretly doubted that he was actually well-organized enough to run an international conspiracy, it made you depressed to see him looking so happy.

But then he took off on the worst victory lap since — well, do you remember that baseball player who celebrated his grand slam home run by leaping in the air and fracturing a leg?

“We’re not talking about health care right now, but I will,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

He also vowed to make the Republicans “the party of health care.” Great strategy!

And here we go again, presuming Trump does everything wrong... because you so much want him to be wrong. What if those thoughts he's causing you to have — thoughts about what an utter screw-up he is — are part of his genius way of winning?

A new template for Trump-haters: "Trump Is Epic."

That's the headline for a conversation at the NYT between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. The pull quote under the photo of Trump is: "'Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?' Gail Collins asks."

I'm thinking this is a real turning point in Trump-hating, a recognition that the portrayal of Trump as small isn't working anymore. The man with the tiny hands and tiny penis, the child of man, who bumbled into the White House and is throwing tantrums, watching TV, writing the teeny-tiny missives called tweets, eating kid's food, and ordering befuddled adults into acting out his random impulses — this template won't do anymore. The new template is: He's HUGE!

That's my hypothesis. I'll follow it with a new tag, "Trump Is Epic." And let me give you some highlights from the Collins-and-Stephens dialogue. The first observation isn't that Trump is epic, but that Trump is tiny:

Gail Collins: [G]iven the man’s general disorganization, I find it hard to imagine the [Muller] report picking him out as the sinister, canny leader who was orchestrating everything behind the scenes.

That's the familiar little child-man. The old template.

Anticipating a fizzle of a Muller report, Collins searches her feelings to find something that could be big: "Still feeling that the real disaster for Trump is going to come with the investigations into his business practices in New York." Stephens says that his "guess" too. He expresses concern about Trump's inauguration committee and campaign-finance violations, but he thinks they won't amount to much if the Russian collusion story doesn't stick. So instead of concentrating on "what Trump might have done behind people’s backs," we should shift our concern to "what he does every day in plain sight."

So Collins poses the question, "Which horrible things the president has done lately seem most appalling to you?" Stephens indicates he's ready to go — "Well, that list is long" — but then he chooses to "start by praising Trump on a couple of fronts":

I think he’s shown moral leadership on Venezuela, by getting much of the world to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president and drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under the Maduro regime. And I’m also glad he’s partially reversed course and will keep at least some troops in Syria....

That's all big and presidential, and so is the first appalling thing Stephens comes up with —the declaration of a national emergency over border security. Second is calling the NYT "a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE" (the caps are Trump's). And then "hankering for a deal" with North Korea, the "desire to start another trade war with Europe," and "lies and exaggerations and demagoguery about the purported evils of illegal immigration." And then there's just his "overall comportment" — you mean like this? — "his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency."

Collins joins in with reproductive rights, domestic violence, and guns, and it seems obvious that the main problem is what I've thought it's been all along for Trump haters — they wanted the other candidate to win the last election. And they get around to (almost) admitting it:

Gail: When he was running against Hillary Clinton I thought he was terrible, but not nearly as terrible as he turned out to be. Kind of amazing. Did you foresee all of this?

Bret: Partly. I wrote more than a dozen columns for The Wall Street Journal during the last presidential campaign, denouncing his bigotry, lawlessness, ignorance and demagoguery. He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet.... 

They never declare "Trump Is Epic." That's just in the headline, so it's a bit of a puzzle. I'll leave my hypothesis as it is. Trump-haters are pivoting. Trump is now presidential — mega-presidential. But it's bad horrible terrible presidential.

ADDED: Bret Stephens reveals his propensity for disgust with his repetition of the word "foul": "his overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency" and "He vindicates my first impression with his every foul tweet." The one I would edit out is "foul tweet." It's not just the repetition but also the accidentally funny homophone, "fowl tweet." You've got that bird image already there with "tweet."

Stephens uses an old-fashioned locution for some reason. He sounds like the straight man in a 1930s comedy. Your overall comportment continues to be a foul stain on the office of the presidency sounds like a line that would have been delivered to the President of Freedonia in "Duck Soup." Hey, there's that fowl again!