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Suggestions for thinking about the VP debate and the Iran-Israel conflict.

I pulled back what I was going to send today.  Instead, I thought it might be helpful to contribute to our thinking about the VP debate last night and the war in the Middle East. 

Several thoughts about the debate.  It placed two more national election candidates in the same visual framework as Trump and Harris. The voters now have four separate individuals to evaluate on the basis of the debate format.  Three seemed mentally competent.  One stands out as unpresidential. That may sink in and have some effect on the election. 

I have always seen Vance as intellectually strong.  He is a strategic thinker.  We need to take him very seriously.  He has to walk back past attempts to be clever.  I believe he will.  He will hold his own with the other heir-apparents to the MAGA movement.  It’s too early to tell whether or not he will be able to win the support of the base.  MAGA is a coalition of disillusioned, often angry, objectors to our government.  Therefore, far more diverse than many realize.  Can anyone replace Trump?  And if not, will the movement fracture?  It won’t disappear. 

I think relating all the nation’s ills to cross-border illegal immigration is a reach too far and in danger of becoming less and less convincing.  The average person knows better. 

There has been, though, some success in the other main Republican theme, the alleged successes of Trump’s Presidency contrasted to the failures of Biden/Harris.  Walz did not manage to attack this line of argument successfully.  I see this as the central pillar of the Trump/Vance campaign.  There is part of the Republican voting coalition that is not core Trump.  This is the critical element for Republican success in the battleground states.

Finally, I think the conflict in the Middle East will have an effect on the election, but doubt that anyone at this point can predict how and how much.   It takes the focus off Gaza.  It casts Israel in a more favorable light.  It shows the next President will face extremely complex foreign policy issues that will require coalition building, very specific and guarded economic and military decisions against a backdrop

of global economic disruption.  This is not about Ukraine and Putin or China and hegemony.  It does not allow candidates to make strong decisive, and largely symbolic, gestures.  I don’t think it fits the Trump style. 

Pro-Israel sentiment cuts across the US political divide; so does targeting Iran.  There is room here for some degree of national unity.  Does that advantage a sitting President?  We will see. 

But the larger issue is the need for a competent American administration to work with regional leaders, and an international coalition, for a long-term peaceful settlement of regional conflicts.  This will require not the actions of a moment, but a long painful process of political inclusion and economic integration. 

Humility in the use of power.  Patience in the pursuit of justice. Compassion in the assignment of blame.   

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