I’m seeing a flurry of posts, articles, and editorials calling for us to “turn the temperature down” on our political rhetoric. These posts are interspersed with some pointing out the dire need to be able to argue against things we actually think are wrong. How to split that baby?

I suggest that we all, including both Republican and Democratic politicians, stop telling people what we don’t like and telling them what we do like. Rather than declaiming that “Trump is a threat to democracy” say what you think he should have done or should be doing. State everything positively rather than negatively. I think you’ll find that it’s harder than it sounds.

I realize that I am whistling past a graveyard here and there is no real prospect for what I am suggesting actually happening. As I’ve said before negativism works.

The graph above is from this post at Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Significantly more U.S. adults than a year ago, 55% versus 41%, would like to see immigration to the U.S. decreased. This is the first time since 2005 that a majority of Americans have wanted there to be less immigration, and today’s figure is the largest percentage holding that view since a 58% reading in 2001. The record high was 65%, recorded in 1993 and 1995.

The last time the percentage of foreign-born in the United States was as high as it is now we, basically, slammed the door on immigration for forty years. I have been warning about this for some time.

I, personally, would prefer that we were able to accept more people who are genuinely in need of asylum and that we accept a certain number of highly-trained individuals to work in the United States. I would prefer that over shutting the door. Farther down in the same post, there is a finding that the percentage of people who support mass deportations is increasing.

The editors of the Washington Post have a lot to say today. In the first editorial I wanted to note is this one in which they observe that there’s a lot of blame to go around for the present ambient temperature of our political discourse:

In short, this brush with individual mortality and national calamity is an unsought, but golden, opportunity for Mr. Trump to help cool the nation’s political fevers and set a new direction. It offers him a chance to show that there is a more constructive path.

This responsibility is not Mr. Trump’s alone. Every participant in our civic life needs to conduct some soul-searching. The motives of the gunman in Butler, Pa., remain unknown as we write. That they were so plausibly political, though, should prompt deeper reconsideration. Speech and conduct once considered unthinkably uncivil have grown routine: We live in a country where protesters harass lawmakers, justices, journalists and business leaders with bullhorns at their homes, shouting obscenities. Universities have become battlegrounds. And outright physical violence has become a bipartisan hazard — as Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can attest. Ordinary citizens get caught in the mayhem — or, in the case of volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, who lost his life protecting his family from bullets Saturday, extraordinary ones.

In a statement of her own, former first lady Melania Trump appealed to our common humanity. “A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald’s passion,” she wrote. Ms. Trump is correct that there’s too much vilification and dehumanization in politics, though it must be acknowledged that her husband is responsible for referring to fellow citizens as “traitors” who “hate America.”

Democrats, too, need to recalibrate their rhetoric. “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s eye,” Mr. Biden said last week in remarks to a group of campaign donors. He struck an appropriate tone on Sunday: “Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now,” he wrote on X.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, and in contrast to the many bipartisan calls for calm and unity, threat-exaggeraters on the right included, lamentably, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), reportedly under consideration to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, who quickly posted on X that the Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly” to the assassination attempt. Vivek Ramaswamy, a surrogate for Mr. Trump, said the shooting “wasn’t totally a shock”: “First they sued him. Then they prosecuted him. Then they tried to take him off the ballot.”

Beware of anyone who constructs such sentences around the word “they.”

Gerard Baker strikes a similar note in his Wall Street Journal column:

Avoid the idea that, even if they didn’t actually pull the trigger, Democrats are somehow to blame because of their rhetoric.

It’s true that the language about Mr. Trump and the Republicans is often absurdly overblown: the recent ululations about Project 2025 are a case in point. But it must be within the bounds of acceptable political discourse to claim that Mr. Trump represents a threat to democracy, not least because some of his behavior and rhetoric support the claim. So is it acceptable for Mr. Trump and Republicans to say that President Biden and the Democrats are destroying America without it being interpreted as a signal to anyone with a rifle to take out the Democratic candidate.

If there is room for emotional restraint in the aftermath of this horror, there is also reason to hope for a small movement toward de-escalating the mutual loathing to which so many Americans have fallen prey.

We’ve had a taste of where this leads—the near-assassination of a presidential candidate and the anarchy that might have ensued—as well as the actual murder of a man, a rally attendee who merely wanted to be a political participant.

I completely agree that “both sides do it”. They do it because it works. But the Democrats have a much larger megaphone than the Republicans. The Democratic-leaning media, e.g. ABC, NBC, CBS, the Associated Press, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc., have a much greater reach than the more-or-less centrist media, pretty much limited to Reuters, the Wall Street Journal (news),and a handful of others, or the Republican-leaning media, e.g. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal opinion section. Additionally, although the “bully pulpit” is impeded because Joe Biden occupies the Oval Office, it’s not non-existent. Consequently, IMO they have a greater responsibility.

Will they accept it? For a while, I think.

In his most recent Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead declaims that the assassination attempt on President Trump has pushed the United States in a more Jacksonian direction:

Mr. Trump is part of a strain of American politics that Andrew Jackson brought to power in 1828. In domestic politics, Jacksonians are skeptical of big business, hate the political and social establishment, and demand “common sense” solutions to complex problems. They support the military but not an officer class seen as distant from the values and folkways of the nation—West Point stuffed shirts in the 19th century, “woke generals” today. They assume the political class is deeply and irreformably corrupt.

In foreign policy Jacksonians feel no need to spread democracy around the world. Instinctively realist, they view the United Nations and international law that would bind the U.S. with fear and contempt. Absent serious threats against America, Jacksonians have little interest in foreign affairs. But when the U.S. is attacked, they believe every measure is justified in its defense. Jacksonians don’t regret assaults on civilian targets during World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Relentless warfare against terrorists is justified; most Jacksonians support Israel’s war in Gaza and believe the U.S. should respond to terror with the same vigor.

and

Jacksonian America likes strong leaders, even those like George Washington and the two Roosevelts who come from elite backgrounds and whose policy preferences don’t always align perfectly with Jacksonian ideas. Jacksonians are deeply skeptical of most politicians; Jacksonian faith and loyalty, once given, can be enduring. This gives Jacksonian leaders flexibility on policies; the base will often follow where they lead.

Saturday’s events made America more Jacksonian and gave Mr. Trump an unbreakable hold on Jacksonian America. On the one hand, the assassination attempt reinforced the sense that Jacksonian America is under siege. On the other, Mr. Trump’s fist-waving defiance and determination quieted any doubt about his personal courage. Attacks on him from the political and journalistic establishments will only boost his standing with his followers and inflame Jacksonian hatred of elites.

While I agree with his assessment of the reactions of the Jacksonians who already support Mr. Trump, I think he’s wrong about the rest. I think that the assassination attempt will further reveal just how Jacksonian Mr. Trump’s supporters are but I doubt it will convert the Wilsonians who dominate Democratic politics to become Jacksonians.

I think the battle lines are already drawn. The relatively small number of undecideds may lean more towards Mr. Trump as a result of the assassination attempt. I further doubt that the anodyne remarks about comity will persist. In 2001 by November the New York Times had already abandoned the more tempered remarks it was making in September and was going hammer and tongs against President Bush. The calls for unity will quiet soon.

Like most people I was appalled at the assassination attempt against President Trump. You can only turn the temperature up so high before someone somewhere boils over. I was also relieved when the identity of the would-be assassin was revealed. It could have been much, much worse.

There are quite a few things being said in reaction to the incident that I simply don’t understand. For some Mr. Trump’s immediate reaction, shaking his fist and shouting “Fight!” were signs of strength and determination. For others they were indications of the things they don’t like about Trump. Where you sit depends on where you stand.

I also do not believe that politicians will eschew negative advertising. Believing they will do so is naive. The reason they use negative advertising is that it works. President Biden did not suspend the campaign of negative advertising against President Trump that was about to be unleashed because he suddenly thinks that President Trump has suddenly become a good guy or because the incident has convinced him that a milder, more civil campaign is what he must do but because he and his advisors realize that a harshly negative campaign against Trump in this moment will be too sharp a contrast with the pleas for civility they’re making. I doubt that the editors of the New Republic are contrite about portraying Trump as Hitler on the cover of their magazine.

What I think is actually happening is that, if anything, this incident is revealing how hardened the battle lines have become. I’m afraid they will only become harder.

In her regular Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan characterizes the Democrats’ options in their reactions to President Biden’s determination to remain in the presidential race as either suicidal, realistic, or romantic. According to Ms. Noonan the suicidal route is Ridin’ with Biden: he will be defeated by Donald Trump, taking some number of Democratic House and Senate members with him gaining a likely prospect o naming two additional Supreme Court justices.

“Realistic” is inducing Mr. Biden to end his candidacy and:

The realist route, if Mr. Biden ultimately steps aside, is to limit debate, forestall trouble and anoint Kamala Harris as the new nominee.

Here’s the “romantic” strategy:

The romantic route is to take personal responsibility and push the president to step aside. What follows is the Hail Mary pass: Say a prayer, throw the long ball and see who catches it. Devise a process—mini-primaries, open convention, figure it out—that lets the people of the party decide. Devise a formula whereby delegates can choose from five or six candidates. But open this thing up, anoint no one.

I think the Democrats are likely to stay the course. The president certainly will—the prospects for him, his family, and his staff are pretty bleak if he doesn’t. Note, too, that it is in the nature of a politician to believe that a) he/she is the best candidate for the job and b) he/she can win. If it weren’t they wouldn’t be politicians.

Based on the conversation coming out following the recent NATO conference, there is a substantial difference of opinion over the level of threat that Russia poses to NATO. President Biden as recently as in his press conference last night proclaimed confidently that, were Russia not stopped in Ukraine, it would go on to Poland and, possibly, others. The counter-argument is articulated at Responsible Statecraft by George Beebe:

Does Russia in fact harbor intentions of military conquest against NATO member states? Given the caution Putin has exercised so far in the Ukraine war in avoiding direct attacks on NATO members, the answer is probably no.

And there is a very understandable reason for this caution. As my colleagues Anatol Lieven and Mark Episkopos and I point out in a new Quincy Institute brief, one does not have to delve very deeply into the conventional military balance between Russia and NATO to realize that the Russian military would be badly outmatched in any war with NATO and would have good reason to believe that an attack on any individual NATO member would quickly turn into a conflict with the alliance as a whole.

As the Quincy brief explains, “NATO has a greater than three-to-one advantage over Russia in active-duty ground forces. … The alliance has a ten-to-one lead in military aircraft and a large qualitative edge as well, raising the possibility of total air superiority. At sea, NATO would likely have the capacity to impose a naval blockade on Russian shipping, whose costs would dwarf current economic sanctions. While Russia has clear superiority over individual NATO states, especially in the Baltics, it is extremely unlikely it could exercise this advantage without triggering a broader war with the entire NATO alliance.”

The actual behavior of our NATO allies casts more light on the subject. From Statista military spending for 2024 is:

Lithuania, the former Soviet Baltic country with the largest GDP, is spending just over 2% of GDP on defense. Taking its cue from Germany and France rather than Poland, it is spending just enough to discourage complaints about free-riding. The most recent admissions to the pact, Sweden and Finland are doing the same while substantial economies like those of Canada, Italy, and Spain are spending under 2%. The U. S. is spending more as a percentage of its much greater GDP than any country except Poland or Estonia.

At Geopolitical Monitor Bilal Bilici argues that NATO has been a bargain for the United States:

There are no unpaid dues, bills, or invoices among NATO members, no one owes any debt to any other member. There is the commitment of 2% of GDP to be spent on defense, which was agreed at the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales, and actually, we have seen the strongest growth of defense spending among members in the past several years. This year it is expected that twenty-two out of the thirty-two total member countries will meet or exceed the 2 percent target, including France and Germany.

However, if we must look at NATO from a transactional basis, then we should consider return on investment. Far from being a burden on the US taxpayer as argued by the isolationists, the United States has benefitted enormously from the alliance.

Firstly, in terms of raw defense spending, the United States has not expended budget on behalf of other nations. In fact, without NATO, US defense spending would in fact have to be much higher. Thanks to NATO, the United States is better prepared to defend itself and is able to apply its resources more effectively. The common funding mechanisms and joint military exercises on NATO ensure that member nations share the costs of defense, which helps mitigate the financial strain on a single nation. Additionally, the standardization of equipment and interoperability among NATO forces means that the U.S. can operate seamlessly with its allies, enhancing overall military readiness.

Secondly, the US benefits from the position of leadership in the global economy. By leading NATO, the United States maintains significant influence over global security policies and initiatives. This leadership role allows the U.S. to shape the strategic direction of the alliance, ensuring that its interests and values are represented on the global stage. In particular, we are seeing the emergence of coordinated defense industrial strategies among NATO allies, including the European Defense Industrial Strategy (EDIS), which aims to lay out a framework not only to dramatically increase manufacture of munitions, but to compete globally in technology, innovation, agriculture, and energy.

Lastly, there is the simple face value of deterrence from attack. A mutual defense treaty with such a large, geopolitically important bloc greatly improves US national security at a much lower cost than going at it alone.

There’s something missing from Mr. Bilici’s piece: numbers. I have no idea how you can determine return on investment without calculating either costs or benefits. I can’t argue that NATO has not been a tremendous bargain for a number of our NATO allies, particularly Germany and, notably, since Mr. Bilici is a Turkish politician, Turkey. I think it has provided some benefits to the U. S. There are also two words missing from Mr. Bilici’s piece: readiness and preparedness. Given the notable unreadiness of most of our NATO allies’ militaries what would they need to spend to have the level of preparedness actually required? And how can you calculate ROI without taking that into account?

I also can’t help but agree that if you estimate the benefits as boundless regardless of cost NATO would be a good deal. However, I honestly don’t see how the United States can provide the sort of defense our NATO allies would require in the absence of considerably increased expenditures by those allies so their militaries have higher levels of readiness without re-establishing bases in many of them which would require not only expanding our military and what we’re spending on it but increasing our industrial output to supply them.

The need for more spending by those allies if the core of Robert Peters’s post from the National Security Journal, hosted by Heritage:

The United States has been saying for almost 20 years that Europe needs to do more. In 2011, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned European leaders that “if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders—those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.” A decade and a half later, less than two-thirds of NATO members have reached that mark.

This represents a deep unseriousness on the part of many Europeans when it comes to security issues. Europe can either accept to live with a Russia that is able to outgun and therefore threaten Europe, or it can choose to re-arm and deter further Russian aggression within Europe. As noted earlier, many nations in Europe are already moving to higher defense budgets, but more must be done—and urgently.

The good news is that Europe has the resources to easily deter Russia. It has the required manpower, the wealth, the technology, and the industry.

It simply has to make the choice to do so.

The open question is why should they? If the benefits of defending our NATO allies is as great as Mr. Bilici implies, wouldn’t we keep right on doing it regardless of what they spend? That certainly seems to be the conclusion at which they have arrived.

I found Curtis L. Fox’s assessment of the military preparedness of our NATO allies at the Military Review very informative:

The United States has always occupied a preeminent position in NATO due to its vast military and financial resources (the table provides a useful comparison). Apart from the United States, the bulk of NATO combat power was historically provided by the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. But much has changed in recent decades. Are Germany, France, and the United Kingdom capable of deploying heavy ground forces in a timely response to the eruption of a major military confrontation with Russia? Are there other important hard power contributors to NATO?3

The short answers to his questions are all “no”. Of the most powerful countries only the United Kingdom has the highest level of preparedness (I was wrong in thinking that only France was). Germany’s military is a charade. Even the UK’s military is greatly reduced in its ability to project force.

The most reasonable conclusions are that they don’t really think that Russia is an existential threat but they wouldn’t object to the United States shouldering a disproportionate share of the responsibility for defending our allies. I question whether we can without the industrial base to support us. My claim is that military power is downstream from industrial strenght.

I still think my question is the right one: what would it take to bring the militaries of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom up to the necessary level of preparedness and strength. 2% of their GDPs? 5%? The erosion certainly can’t be remediated in the short term.

At the Center for European Policy Analysis Kurt Volker is outraged by what isn’t on the agenda of the NATO Summit:

One might think, therefore, that at the July 9-11 gathering of NATO heads of state and government — a meeting marking 75 years of the world’s most successful military alliance — the number one issue would be the plan for victory and the restoration of peace in Europe.

One would be wrong. There will be no talk of doing whatever it takes to win the war, of defeating Putinism, and of inviting Ukraine to join NATO as quickly as possible. Instead, the summit has already been pre-planned to take only modest, incremental steps to support Ukraine, while deliberately avoiding the most fundamental questions.

This low bar was set and rigorously enforced by the United States and Germany, despite pleas for a more robust posture by several NATO allies. Washington and Berlin have made it clear that the key goal is not to provoke Putin and to avoid escalation. His defeat is still not the objective.

Mr. Volker has his own proposals:

The remedy to all these fears would be for the NATO summit to send a clear and unambiguous message to Vladimir Putin that despite the uncertainties in American leadership, NATO has the strength, resolve, and resources organized behind a clear plan to ensure Ukrainian victory, Russian defeat, and the restoration of peace in Europe.

Ideally, NATO would make clear it will give Ukraine everything required to expel the Russian invader, with no restrictions on the types of weapons provided or their use, other than conforming to international law.

Allies should establish a massive fund for expanding defense industrial production and procuring supplies for Ukraine, based on established NATO cost-share formulae. Allies should provide direct assistance in extending air defenses over western and southwestern Ukraine. Allies should assist with demining and guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. And NATO should begin the process of admitting Ukraine as a member, just as the European Union has done by opening accession talks with Ukraine.

Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have all been roiled by political unrest recently. In which of those countries were the voters upset that their governments weren’t providing enough aid to Ukraine? If you guess “none”, you would be right.