Historian: Don’t Underestimate Trump the Statesman

“The Trump administration’s foreign policy is too frequently underestimated,” Niall Ferguson avers at The Boston Globe. Take Mideast diplomacy: “No journalist I know takes seriously Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace initiative,” but the effort is deeply attuned to new realities in the region, since “previous peace initiatives put the big constitutional and territorial questions first” — issues that are “big, but insoluble. Kushner’s goal is to begin with the small matter of money, which in reality is not so small.” Team Trump is putting its hopes in pragmatic Arabs who are sick of terrorists and “corrupt governments.” Linking their desires to Israeli-Palestinian peace, Ferguson argues, is a positively Kissingerian stroke.

Foreign desk: Battle for Hong Kong Has Just Begun

The “weeks-long, record-breaking protest against proposed amendments to the extradition laws” in Hong Kong may be just the “start of a protracted war between freedom and dictatorship,” warn Bradley Thayer and Lianchao Han at The Hill. The changes would’ve given the Chinese Communist Party considerable judicial authority over the island, decisively transforming Hong Kong into “an integrated part of the mainland.” The protests “manifested a palpable desire of Hong Kong citizens to preserve their rights,” but Beijing is prepared to “crush” the uprising. And the Communists may yet succeed, as Beijing often “pays little cost for human rights abuses” within the international community. Thus, the “erosion of rights of Hong Kongers will continue” — a prospect that “does not augur well for global peace and stability.”

Conservative: Never One-Up a Socialist

In April, Sen. Liz Warren proposed a $1.2 trillion plan for free college tuition and massive student-debt forgiveness. Now Sen. Bernie Sanders, her arch-rival in the 2020 Democratic field, has announced his own, even more massive plan. The point, The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein says, is to send Warren a warning: “Never get into a bidding war with a socialist when you’re playing with other people’s money.” Warren’s proposal “was somewhat limited,” aiming to “completely wipe out debt for 75% of borrowers with student loans.” Sanders goes for 100 percent, so people “from upper middle class families, with six-figure salaries, would benefit.” Notably, “the proposal comes as Sanders has been trying to fend off competition from Warren, who is supplanting him in many polls.”

Trumpian Democrat: Haley for Veep

President Trump’s “best chance of re-election” in 2020 is tapping Nikki Haley as his running mate, argues Democrats for Trump founder Andrew Stein at The Wall Street Journal. Current Veep and former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence helped in 2016 by attracting evangelicals, but the “greater obstacle” next year will be “politically moderate suburban women, many of whom see” Trump as “divisive.” Haley displayed “political savvy and tough-mindedness” as South Carolina governor and later UN ambassador. She has the respect of “diplomats from all over the globe” and “Americans at home,” Stein notes, rendering her an attractive choice for “moderate and Republican-leaning women.”

Science beat: About That GOPers-Are-Defensive Study

Remember the 2008 study, published in the prestigious journal Science, that found that conservatives supposedly feel more triggered by threatening images than liberals do? Seen as “path-breaking and provocative,” it was widely featured in popular books and journalism, Kevin Arceneaux and three other social-scientists recall in Slate — but it turns out its conclusions “aren’t so accurate.” Arceneaux & Co tried to replicate the study by showing “scary” images to respondents and registering their brain reactions. The result: The teams “independently failed to find that people’s physiological reactions to these images correlated with their political attitudes.” So the authors “drafted a paper that reported the failed replication studies along with a more nuanced discussion about the ways in which physiology might matter for politics and sent it to Science.” The journal’s reaction: “A week later, we received a summary rejection.”

— Compiled by Ashley Allen & Sohrab Ahmari