The Stainless vs. the Shameless

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/trump-comey-collins-stephens.html

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Gail Collins: Bret, in these troubled times, I find it soothing that we can agree so often. Whatever the issue — British elections, congressional stalemate, Comey hearings — we can come together and blame Donald Trump.

Bret Stephens: I agree: We agree too much. So let me say that I find this liberal beatification of Jim Comey to be a little, er, opportunistic. Back in early November, Comey was the guy who had “an unquenchable thirst for the spotlight” and was guilty of an “astounding act” that “was a deplorable and reckless dereliction of duty” — and that was just Katrina vanden Heuvel’s opinion, in a column last November called “A Dirty Trick That Won’t Change the Outcome.”

But now liberals are treating him as a patriot of unimpeachable integrity and judgment. What gives?

Gail: Trump! Anybody who followed Comey through his Bush-era heroics, his destruction of Hillary and now this new incarnation should realize that he has a huge ego and a stupendous instinct for self-preservation. If I was president, my plan would be to flatter him delicately, asking for his opinion on law enforcement policy (like Obama did) and steer very, very clear of doing anything that would make him feel threatened.

The amazing thing about this latest story is that Trump never took the time to figure Comey out — the person with perhaps the most capacity in all Washington to do him harm. Once again we see that this alleged dealmaker isn’t even as crafty as your average entry level secretary.

Bret: I’ll try to stress our areas of disagreement here by saying I didn’t think much of Comey during the Bush years, either: not on his prosecution of Frank Quattrone, or his opposition to warrantless wiretaps, or his role in the witch hunt against Scooter Libby.

I also think he’s deeply vulnerable on the matter of leaking, given that as recently as March (before his firing and his own leaking) he was testifying that “any unauthorized disclosure of classified conversations or documents is potentially a violation of law and a serious, serious problem.”

Gail: Cannot get upset about the leaking part.

Bret: Comey is that familiar Washington type: the self-regarding, self-styled saint. And in the Comey-Trump saga we have another familiar Washington battle: the stainless versus the shameless.

Trump could have fired him on Day 1, and Democrats would have been in no position to cry foul because that’s what Hillary Clinton might well have done, too. Or he could have kept Comey in place — and in check — by keeping him where he was, with his somewhat tarnished reputation, and putting up with him much as Bill Clinton put up with Janet Reno.

But of course Donald couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to twitch, he had to tweet — and then he had to offer to testify under oath.

Gail: Bet you a really good bottle of wine that under-oath thing never happens.

Here’s someplace where I think we can part company: Congress is back. The Republicans would allegedly like to accomplish something. If Mitch McConnell asked for your advice, what would you tell him?

Bret: Tax cuts, of course! The House G.O.P. committed a huge blunder by putting health care first, and now they’re saddled with a bad bill and bad politics. What this country needs is sustained economic growth, not gigantic experiments every decade with 17 percent of the economy.

U.S. corporations park an estimated $2.5 trillion abroad to avoid U.S. corporate tax rates. Cut the rate; repatriate the capital to the U.S. of A. Abolish the alternative minimum tax that nearly everyone agrees has long since outlived its intended purpose of catching a handful of wealthy tax avoiders. Bring down the top rates and simplify the code. You know, the same formula that got us out of the malaise of the ’70s even as interest rates went up.

I know you’ll agree on all the above!

Gail: Because I am such an extremely reasonable person I agree in part. The corporate tax rate is way too high compared with other countries. However, many companies don’t pay it since there are a ton of special interest loopholes. Get rid of the loopholes, and I am with you on the corporate taxes.

I don’t see any reason to lower the top income rates. If you want to stimulate the economy, give a cut to the people on the lower end. They’ll actually go out and spend the difference.

But here’s what happens when Republicans talk about tax cuts. They try to come to some agreement on tax reform and fail. Then they announce they’ll balance the cuts with reductions in spending, which are almost always directed at the people least able to cope. And even those usually fail, at which point all you have left is a down-and-dirty tax cut for the rich plus a larger deficit.

Given the crowd we’ve got now, any tax bill will be the worst case scenario. Best case scenario is that they do nothing but the minimum housekeeping measures necessary to keep the government open.

Bret: Well, let me first take you up on the point of agreement. C.E.O.’s of large companies will testify that a hefty share of corporate taxes are paid out of their labor costs. So a corporate rate cut is one way to stimulate wage growth that has been stagnant.

On the point about the rich getting tax cuts — well, people making $250,000 (less than 3 percent of returns filed) or more pay nearly 52 percent of all income taxes, so yes, tax cuts will inevitably benefit them. So the tax code is already more than sufficiently progressive. And our debates about tax policy should be about growth and efficiency, not fairness.

Gail: A little fairness never hurt anybody. Hey, that could be the Democrats’ new campaign slogan!

Sorry. Please continue.

Bret: What I wonder is: Are we past the point politically where something like the 1981 tax reform — introduced in the House by none other than Democratic Rep. Dan Rostenkowski and passed with broad Democratic support — is impossible today? Ditto for the second “Reagan tax cut” of 1986: It was sponsored by Dick Gephardt and Bill Bradley. Will we ever be able to get bipartisan support for any tax cut? Is there a trade-off Democrats or liberals might accept for it?

Or are politics today a new Western Front, 1917, each of us in our respective ideological trenches, no allowance anymore even for a Christmas truce?

Gail: One of my annual rituals used to be calling Bill Bradley at tax time and asking him how they did it. Basically, he’d say that people trusted one another enough to work together. Which sounds so remote it could be a scenario from Congress on the planet Krypton.

This is mostly the Republicans’ fault. Every recent attempt at bipartisan cooperation — remember immigration reform? — was shot down by the far right. And if Obamacare is a mess it’s in large part because the Republicans pulled out of the administration’s efforts to get a bipartisan bill out of the Senate.

Bret: On the breakdown in bipartisan civility, there’s more than enough blame to go around. Harry Reid smearing Mitt Romney as a tax cheat based on no evidence, anyone? But let’s not get into a fight about who started it or who was more uncivil and when: It reminds me of trying to adjudicate arguments between young kids.

Gail: Well, fighting is sort of our purpose. In a deeply civilized way, of course. But go on.

Bret: I think the larger culprit is media and technology. We each of us now inhabit airtight ideological silos — Planet Hannity or Planet Maddow. We retweet whatever we agree with; we block whoever we don’t. We’ll sit still for opposing points of view only when it’s a food fight. Social media was supposed to create greater interconnectedness; it’s done the opposite. I realize we’ve known this for some time; but it’s thanks to Trump that we are all learning (O.K., I’m learning) that intense political polarization really does have consequences.

There’s actually a Platonic dialogue that gets into some of this stuff, but I think that would take us a little far afield!

Gail: The new media has certainly ramped things up, but there’s nothing new about people wanting to hear only their own side of the argument. I may have told you that when I was editorial page editor I read a lot of the reader comments and nobody ever once wrote: “Thank you for that opinion piece that I didn’t agree with. It really opened me up to a new point of view.”

I have faith that the next generation will be used to Twitter-based political discourse and ready for a less crazed dialogue. Meanwhile, I plan to blame everything on the Republicans.

Bret: Even if the good old days weren’t good, it’s nice to think of them that way — a pretended past in the service of an aspirational future.