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Hello, and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, your daily politics dispatch from the nation’s capital. It’s foreign policy Tuesday and I’m Julia Ioffe.
NATO opened its summit in Washington, D.C., today, celebrating 75 years of the alliance. Last night was NATO night at Nats Park, and the entirety of the D.C. blob sat and baked outside in their shift dresses and suits, despite the heat advisory. To celebrate the beginning of the summit, outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg threw out the first pitch. But not before, I’m told, the Norwegian asked local foreign policy wonks to explain the rules of baseball to him. (I’m so with you, SecGen…)
Also on Monday, the G.O.P. released its platform, summarized in 20, all-caps bullet points, which I’m sure we all want to mock but, honestly, it’s pretty shrewd and in line with the very effective messaging of Trump and the Republican Party: the repetition of simple, seductive points, whether they square with the truth or not. Contrast that with the Democratic Party, in 2016, when the Clinton/Kaine campaign released a literal book, and charged $16 for it. (As The New Republic’s Alex Shephard wrote at the time, “It is a very bad book and there is absolutely no reason for it to exist.”)
That said, the G.O.P. bullet points predictably...
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| It was supposed to be a triumphal moment: a celebration of the NATO alliance’s 75th birthday in the capital of its backbone and main underwriter, the United States. The summit, which was booked for this week years ago to accommodate Joe Biden’s schedule, was supposed to be a high point for a president who came into office with sterling, even platinum, foreign policy credentials—the exact opposite of his proudly know-nothing predecessor.
America’s NATO allies—in fact, pretty much the entire European continent—breathed a massive, jubilant sigh of relief upon... |
