arthur brooks : hi, gail. one week! one week from today, this campaign will finally end. and we can get on to the important business of contesting the election. gail collins : yipes. what do you think the final days will bring? at this point nothing will surprise me. really. tell me that ivanka has run off with dick cheney, and i won<u+2019>t even blink. arthur: last week we joked that the presidential campaign couldn<u+2019>t get any more implausible. but this week, of course, it did. james comey, the director of the f.b.i., announced that he is reconsidering the investigation into clinton<u+2019>s emails because they may have found some new ones on a computer used by anthony weiner seized in the investigation of his sexual messages to an underage girl. gail : the bottom line <u+2014> sloppy handling of the secretary of state<u+2019>s emails <u+2014> doesn<u+2019>t seem to have changed. but the appearance of anthony weiner in the scenario is definitely bad. it reminds people of how messy things always seem to get in clintonland. arthur : sloppy handling of email, or mishandling of classified information <u+2014> the bottom line is yet to be determined, i think. in any case, the polls were already tightening, and this will only accelerate that. what looked two weeks ago like a clinton blowout now looks like it might be a nail biter. unbelievable. gail : yeah. even though the bottom line hasn<u+2019>t changed at all. anybody who votes for donald trump thinking they<u+2019>ll get a less chaotic, more transparent government than they<u+2019>d get with hillary clinton hasn<u+2019>t been paying attention. just for a change of pace, let<u+2019>s pretend for a minute we<u+2019>re in a normal presidential contest. give me the sanest arguments for a pro-trump vote. right now. clock is ticking. arthur : o.k., but first the caveat: these aren<u+2019>t necessarily my views. rather, think of it as a field guide of arguments people make for trump. gail : fine. you can be the objective visitor from another planet. arthur : just trying to help times readers, many of whom are utterly baffled that so many millions support trump. gail : must admit that before the current crisis, i had the <u+201c>why is she not leading by 25 percent?<u+201d> discussion a lot . arthur : so the pro-trump arguments come in three basic categories: let<u+2019>s call them negative, nationalist and nihilist. gail : the three ns. or four if you add nuttiness. arthur : i<u+2019>ll get to that fourth n in a minute. the first is the negative argument: he<u+2019>s not her. many voters are just sickened by the sleaziness of the clinton machine <u+2014> the dubious explanations about the emails; the secretiveness; the inside relationships that enrich the family and the clinton foundation; the apparent tendency to always, always, always take the money. i<u+2019>ve heard so many centrist people say something like, <u+201c>i don<u+2019>t like trump, but i just can<u+2019>t stomach the clinton corruption and scandals.<u+201d> they knows he<u+2019>s trouble, but for them, he<u+2019>s the lesser of two evils. gail : on behalf of the unsilent majority, i feel obliged to point out that that would be a whole lot better argument if we weren<u+2019>t talking about voting for a guy who has a record of stiffing his contractors, hiring illegal workers and using his charitable foundation<u+2019>s money to buy a six-foot portrait of himself. arthur : remember, this group of voters does not contain huge trump enthusiasts. it<u+2019>s a lesser-of-two-evils argument for the most part. gail : yeah, but he<u+2019>s not the lesser. sorry <u+2014> we<u+2019>re looking at the other side now. go ahead. arthur : the second argument revolves around nationalism. in 2004, the great political scientist samuel huntington published a popular book entitled <u+201c>who are we?<u+201d> the title rang a bell with a lot of people, in part because the answer in america is never totally obvious. but the question is important to a lot of people <u+2014> maybe not to wealthy cosmopolitans who frequently travel overseas, but certainly to people who don<u+2019>t feel all that connected with the rest of the world and have always heard that being an american carries with it certain special advantages. gail : and the fact that being an american doesn<u+2019>t require a certain race, creed or ethnicity makes the country more powerful, right? or wrong? arthur : excellent question, gail. <u+201c>who is american?<u+201d> naturally implies an ancillary question: <u+201c>who isn<u+2019>t american?<u+201d> this second question is especially salient in an environment of scarce resources, like the aftermath of a bad recession with a lousy recovery. people at the margins feel like they are competing for jobs and benefits. they want to know who<u+2019>s in and who<u+2019>s out. a nationalism that focuses on physical borders and legal citizenship offers a tidy answer to this question. hence the present appeal of trump<u+2019>s emphasis on immigration. scratch a bit, though, and you can also find some people who answer in terms of excluding certain languages, races or religions. gail : white exceptionalism is the worst case scenario everybody fears. arthur : for my money, any kind of racial or religious exceptionalism is problematic. we<u+2019>ve seen exclusionary nationalism take root elsewhere <u+2014> just look at the current state of politics in europe. the third argument comes from a kind of nihilism. think of this as the <u+201c>port authority theory of government.<u+201d> if somebody asked you, me or most of our readers how to fix the port authority, we<u+2019>d instinctively argue that we should bust up the whole thing and start from scratch. otherwise it<u+2019>s just pouring more and more money down a well. nobody really thinks that more money for the current system will make kennedy airport less gross and embarrassing. gail : i<u+2019>m following you, but just be aware that i am in awe of your bringing the port authority of new york and new jersey into the trump discussion without mentioning chris christie<u+2019>s traffic jam. arthur : i figured you<u+2019>d bring it up. we<u+2019>re a team. anyway, for years, many conservatives have been saying that the whole federal government is effectively one big, wasteful, corrupt port authority. everything bureaucrats touch turns to garbage. to go all out on the metaphors, you gotta drain the swamp, and the only person who can do this is a destructive outsider with an itch to break stuff. you say trump is nuts? all the better! gail : someday, arthur, when this is all behind us, we will have an interesting discussion about why it<u+2019>s so hard to tidy up the federal government. and why you have so many conservatives who will say stuff like: <u+201c>businesses need to get out from under smothering federal regulation. of course, i<u+2019>m in favor of clean water <u+2026><u+201d> you do not clean up the water, or instill high standards in the schools, or provide a reasonable safety net for the disadvantaged without a certain level of messiness. the same people who hate massive government regulation are the ones who complain about simple programs that don<u+2019>t screen out all the less-than-deserving applicants for aid. sorry, i was ranting. so, the three ns. is that it? arthur : mostly, yes. of course, as with any candidate for office, much of trump<u+2019>s support is too inchoate to fit into any taxonomy, and many people combine aspects from several of these arguments. but i think that covers the waterfront. but let<u+2019>s go back to your rant, which i think is important. gail : i love it when you give credence to my rants. arthur : your rants are like a master<u+2019>s thesis compared to what we hear every night on cable tv these days. i know there<u+2019>s some irony in the way people complain about the government. we<u+2019>ve all heard about the infamous protest sign that liberals used to mock the tea party protests: <u+201c>keep your government hands off my medicare!<u+201d> there<u+2019>s no doubt that lots of people distrust government per se but are reliant on government benefits. the key thing to remember is that a government that solves market failures isn<u+2019>t necessarily one that suffocates everything with social engineering. there<u+2019>s a misconception today that we have to choose between anarcho-capitalism and state control of everything. our goal should be clean water with the lightest touch possible to allow free enterprise to flourish maximally. let<u+2019>s not kid ourselves, though <u+2014> this requires some taxes and some regulation. gail : not disagreeing with you so far. arthur : that is basically a view shared by reagan and hayek, and a lot of thinkers on the left, too. obviously hayek<u+2019>s answer to <u+201c>how much taxes<u+201d> and <u+201c>how much regulation<u+201d> would be different than yours, but it<u+2019>s striking how much the conversation has deviated on both sides from this standard today. so when it comes to taxes and spending, what do you predict we<u+2019>ll see depending on who is elected? gail : my prediction is that if hillary clinton is elected, she<u+2019>ll raise taxes on the wealthy. then she<u+2019>ll use the money to attempt to stimulate the economy (big infrastructure repair program) and make life better for the working and middle class, particularly through early childhood education and lower college tuition costs. she may also propose some cost-cutting, which congress will probably ignore. if donald trump is elected, he<u+2019>ll do what republican presidents almost always do: propose big tax reductions that congress will happily pass, along with budget cuts that won<u+2019>t make it through. the nation will plunge into higher deficits and a larger gap between rich and poor. however, we probably won<u+2019>t even notice, since we<u+2019>ll be way too worried about the collapse of our economy after the trade wars start, not to mention the possibility of nuclear apocalypse. just saying. arthur : no surprise that i am less optimistic about the clinton scenario. she certainly knows that there<u+2019>s just not enough money to expand spending if she taxes only the wealthy. to do what she wants, the middle class is going to have to pay in one way or another <u+2014> whether it<u+2019>s higher taxes now or an expanding debt later. and also no surprise, i am dubious that her spending increases will make life better for the working class. how many times have we heard that with just a little (or a lot) more money, things will be better for folks at the bottom? gail : things do get better for the folks on the bottom because of government programs. not going to get into details now. just drawing a line for the future. arthur : we<u+2019>ll bookmark this as a future conversation topic. the trump scenario is a lot more of a wild card because, well, we just have no clue. the policy ideas are ever-changing and not exactly central to the campaign. but it does seem very likely that no matter who is elected, given the commitment of both candidates not to address our biggest fiscal problems like runaway entitlements, these problems will worsen in the coming years. gail : well, that<u+2019>s a cheery conclusion <u+2014> so in keeping with the spirit of this entire race. we<u+2019>ll put the entitlements in next year<u+2019>s discussion basket. meanwhile, just one more week. wondering what new aspect of sexual delinquency we can come up with for the finale. happy voting, arthur. follow the new york times opinion section on facebook and twitter (@nytopinion), and sign up for the opinion today newsletter .
no saints for president
arthur c. brooks and gail collins