Editor’s note: Dearest readers, I’m honored to announce that New York Times opinion columnist and bestselling author Thomas L. Friedman has agreed to lend his wit and wisdom to this scrappy, upstart blog. In our inaugural “Friedman’s Foibles” column, America’s foremost gormless intellectual takes on the challenges facing the Harris-Walz campaign and suggests what Democrats need to do to defeat Donald Trump in November.
Author’s note: Just so I don’t get kicked off this website, let me clarify that THOMAS FRIEDMAN DID NOT ACTUALLY WRITE THIS! This is a PARODY! Please please please don’t suspend me!
I have a confession to make.
When I watched President Biden’s debate with former President Trump earlier this summer, it made me soil myself. I’m not proud to admit it, but it has to be said: I pooped my pants. I didn’t have a fresh pair in my car like I usually do, so I spent the next four hours in a D.C. bar bathroom furtively scrubbing my underwear in the sink with as much hand sanitizer and paper towel as the dispensers would offer, retreating into the stall whenever I heard somebody else walk in. By the end of the night, I and millions of other Americans had made up our minds. We’ve had enough of this shit.
Joe Biden, a good man and a good president who I’ve had the privilege of calling my friend, has had to make an embarrassing admission of his own: He’s not up to the task of beating Donald Trump.
Biden’s decision to drop out in late July was not only brave and patriotic, but quite possibly the bravest and most patriotic thing that anyone has ever done in the history of the universe. In one deft move, Biden delivered a stern “c’mon man” to malarkey about his personal integrity, took the steam out of Trump’s hopes for returning to the White House, and capped off half a century of public service with a simple act of humility.
At the time, I called for Democrats to hold an open process to select a new nominee. My personal preference was Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the foxy tenacious bisexual from Arizona who’s no more afraid to reach across the aisle than she is to spruce up a drab outfit or ditch the dress code at a highfalutin gala. (Kyrsten, please go on a date with me.) After Sinema and countless other Democrats removed their names from contention, however, I trusted that Vice President Harris was the best choice to unify the country and head off an unprecedented series of threats to our democracy, economy, and international leadership the likes of which we haven’t seen since World War II.
In the six weeks that Harris has been the presumptive nominee, she’s been a fine candidate. When I visited Chicago last month for the Democratic National Convention, a cab driver told me he thinks Harris is like a young Muqtada al-Sadr: an energetic, idealistic changemaker who may be the country’s best hope to overcome worsening partisanship and restore civic trust.
But just like Sadr, he said, Harris is failing to live up to expectations. Despite a vow to be more transparent and pivot to the center by offering innovative solutions to America’s most daunting problems, Harris has participated in few press interviews and replied to none of my faxes and emails about disruptive new policy ideas to reel in undecided voters: An app where you can make an Obamacare appointment. A tax credit for going to the dentist. Getting people to wear name tags all the time to make the country friendlier. A student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities. Only doing roadwork at night.
I think it’s still possible for Harris to win, but with the stakes as high as they are, Democrats shouldn’t be content with a candidate whose odds are no better than a coin toss. Democratic National Committee members ought to invoke their authority under the party bylaws and replace Harris with a candidate who can correct for her flaws.
If Democrats want to win—and not just win, but win big—they need to put up someone who rises to the unique challenges of the moment.
Someone who won’t bleed support from young people and the left over the war in Gaza, but who still had the good sense to back Biden in 2020. Someone with a strong command over foreign policy and the technical know-how to navigate tough relations with competitors like China. Someone who can bring in traditional Democratic voters but who understands what it means to pursue a bold new direction in public policy.
Democrats need to nominate Jimmy Carter.
The case for Carter over Harris is clear: The former president has credibility with the left on Israel-Palestine and can distinguish himself from the current administration where Harris can’t. Where Biden and Harris have faced criticism for their inaccessibility to the press, Carter’s famous folk charm may be key to swaying undecided voters. Where Harris is toxic to the right and dispiriting to the left, Carter has a proven track record of delivering Democratic votes in the Deep South. And if he wins? Carter’s decades of promoting democracy and human development worldwide makes him the perfect choice to navigate turbulence abroad.
For most Americans, that’s no joke. I recently spoke to a friend of mine who was visiting New York City from rural Wisconsin. After I assured her that she wouldn’t be mugged and curb-stomped if we walked through Manhattan in broad daylight, we sat down for lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. She was confused by exotic menu items like “rice” and “egg rolls,” and asked why the waiters were all squinting at her. I suggested we eat somewhere else, and she quickly agreed to leave for the nearest Cheesecake Factory and inhale 3,000 calories of blooming onion.
She told me that politicians have been squabbling for too long to address the issues that matter to real Americans, like the Chinese firm Huawei’s recent 5G deal with the Solomon Islands. “Harris think that Americans care about bringing ‘woke’ into the military,” she said. “But nothing else matters if we lose the global telecommunications race.” She plans on voting for Trump a third time, since she appreciates his folk wisdom and creative solutions to everyday problems. But she says she would vote for Carter in a heartbeat. “I guess I like Trump on the economy,” she tells me. “But I can’t imagine how much poorer we would be without the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.”
I suspect that a lot of Americans feel the same way. And that tells me three things our leaders could stand to learn. First, American voters aren’t like lemmings, because American voters don’t travel in packs. And when push comes to shove, they’d rather tread the beaten path than follow a leader off the deep end. That means you can’t win people over unless you relate to them beforehand. As my friend James Carville likes to tell me, the first rule of politics is that you have to meet people where they are. And today, people are looking for someone who will rock the boat enough to get it moving, but not quite enough to throw folks overboard.
Second, China is eating our lunch—and they’re not just eating it, they’re throwing it up, too. If 2016 was the “Trump election” and 2020 was the “COVID election,” 2024 will be the “China election” because the winner will be whoever has the best new ideas to prevent China’s inevitable rise. As a foreign policy expert declared in a recent editorial, “we can say without hyperbole that the Chinese colossus is at least a million times more dangerous than all of [America’s past] adversaries put together.” That’s nothing to scoff at, and Americans understand it’s going to take some epic brainpower and serious legwork to stave off threats like China’s diplomatic overtures to Pacific microstates.
Finally, our politicians need to know that the clock is ticking on what some have called the post-post-Cold War era. The foundations of international order are in deep decay, and it’s going to take a lot more than a new paint job and some duct tape to keep them from falling apart completely. The next president, whoever it is, is going to have to take a peek under the hood and not be afriad to get their hands dirty—or we could wake up and find that the post-post-Cold War era has become a pre-re-Cold War era instead.
Enter President Carter.
If you’ve ever lent an ear to Jimmy Carter, you’ll know it’s not enough just to run out the clock. We need to outrun it with growth, reform, and some of the tried-and-trusted American ingenuity that got us through the first Cold War without firing a shot (except, of course, in Korea, Vietnam, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa). Because if we don’t pull back our sleeves, buckle down, shape up, ship out, roll with the punches, bite the bullet, rise up to the occasion, kill two birds with one stone, and stop beating around the bush, it’s our children and our children’s children who will end up footing the bill. That’s something you and I understand—and the folks in Beijing are licking their chops at—but the folks in Washington could use a little reminder of.
That doesn’t mean we rush for the radicalism of a Nancy Pelosi, a Pete Buttigieg, or a David Pakman. Socialist Jeremy Corbyn’s failures in the U.K. tell us everything we need to know about taking a left tack. And it certainly doesn’t mean we embrace the divisive and demagogic nationalism of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But to keep the Trumps and Corbyns of the world at safe bay, we’ll need the kind of fresh thinking that seems all too lacking in Washington these days.
For Carter, fresh thinking is the name of the game. If most in Washington have swapped out reasoned discourse for tribalism and name-calling, Carter is there to cut through the baloney. That doesn’t mean no frills, bells, or whistles. Carter has never shied away from the dramatic when he thinks it’ll serve American interests. But it does mean working diligently across the aisle to find bipartisan solutions to America’s toughest problems. And when it comes to the type of ambitious thinking we need to take on the looming threat from China, Carter has been on the front lines for years, working with—and against—every Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping.
If you’re Xi Jinping, that should scare you. Trump and Harris may be known variables, but that just means you know how to play them. As for Carter, he has good ideas, he knows how to get things done, and he always does it with a smile.