What I’d rather not hear and what I’d like to hear

Photo: Shutterstok / Lev Radin

The first and perhaps only presidential debate is scheduled next Tuesday in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, where the animosity between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will take center stage. We don’t know what topics ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis will raise, but here are three I’d rather not hear, three I’d like to hear, and some pointed questions for each candidate.

WHAT I’D RATHER NOT HEAR

1. Israel has the right to defend itself

Kamala Harris intoned this during her convention acceptance speech. She doubled down on it during her CNN interview last Thursday, adding that she would scrutinize “how” Israel defends itself. We hear this talk from other world leaders every time Israel suffers a major attack, as if Israel falls into a special category and needs a green light to defend itself.

Israel is a member of the United Nations. Article 51 of the UN Charter and numerous follow-up resolutions enshrine a country’s right to self-defense, including the right to combat terror. It also acknowledges the right to conduct pre-emptive attacks under doctrines of “imminence” and “anticipatory self-defense.” Centuries before the UN came into existence, the right to self-defense was known as an “ancient right.” The State of Israel did not invent warfare, or the rules that others are forcing it to play by.

Is it time to update the rules of warfare to account for terrorists who turn schools and houses of worship into arsenals and hide behind human shields? The moderators should pin Harris down to a direct yes-or-no answer — which she skirted on CNN — as to whether she would impose an arms embargo on Israel and under what conditions.

2. I would stop wars between two countries with a telephone call

Donald Trump’s ongoing refrain is that Russia would not have attacked Ukraine, and October 7 wouldn’t have happened on his watch.

Question for Trump: Do you truly believe that Vladimir Putin — Russia’s dictator for 25 years and the former head of the KGB, a man with no compunction about exiling political enemies to penal colonies in Siberia and executing them, or expropriating businesses from oligarchs — is intimidated or deterred by your mere presence in the Oval Office?

Delete Putin and ask the same question, substituting Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Khamenei, or Kim Jong-Un, all equally ruthless and answerable to no one but themselves. And is Yahya Sinwar taking calls right now from his underground bunker? The president is the commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful armed forces, but when your platform calls for reducing foreign entanglements, why should anyone take your threats or cajoling seriously?

3. We will never let Iran acquire nuclear weapons

We’ve heard this stance from the last four presidents: Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Under each administration, sanctions or no sanctions, with or without a negotiated deal, Iran marches on toward the goal it first set in the 1950s to become a nuclear power. They’re scary even without the bomb.

Since the ayatollahs seized power in 1979, they have methodically spread their tentacles to exert control by proxy to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the West Bank, and Gaza. Iran is scheming to topple Jordan’s Hashemite kingdom, opening a new front on Israel’s eastern border. Iran’s main target is Saudi Arabia, which is why the Saudis clamor for a defense pact with the US even at the cost of recognizing Israel.

Blanket statements about never letting Iran acquire nuclear weapons are shooting blanks. Only two things will stop Iran — military action to cripple its oil economy and destroy its nuclear facilities or acting to topple its Islamic regime. Ask Trump if that’s what he has in mind when he calls for applying maximum pressure on Iran. And ask Harris if she is being naïve in pursuing an agreement that the ayatollahs have no intention of honoring.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR

1. How to make America competitive again

Both candidates support tariffs. A tariff is a tax on importers to make foreign-made merchandise more expensive to entice consumers to buy comparable goods made in the USA. Trump proposes a 10% tariff on all imports and a whopping 60% on Chinese imports. The Biden administration has proposed a 100% duty on Chinese electric vehicles, doubling tariffs on semiconductors and solar panels, and a 25% tariff on lithium-ion batteries and steel.

Tariffs usually backfire because importers pass their higher costs on to consumers. Economists estimate tariffs cost the average middle-income household an extra $1,500 to $1,700 annually. Goldman Sachs analysts say Biden’s proposed tariffs would raise inflation by 1.1%.

Trump-era tariffs on imported washing machines raised prices by $86 per unit in 2018. The tariffs didn’t apply to dryers, but retailers used tariffs as a pretext to raise dryer prices by $92. Prices came down the next year, but a study by the Becker-Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve Board showed that this tariff fleeced consumers of $1.5 billion and created a paltry 1,800 new manufacturing jobs in the US.

Tariffs are sometimes necessary to protect industries or to retaliate against unfair trade practices, but indiscriminate tariffs can sour foreign relations and spark trade wars. Question for the candidates: How do you plan to Make America Competitive Again instead of Confrontational Again?

2. How does Trump feel about guns now?

Donald Trump is a steadfast defender of the Second Amendment right of people to keep and bear arms. A Pew Research poll released in July shows 45% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents own guns, compared to just 20% of Democrats and Democrat leaners. What I’d like to know now is, after being shot and almost killed, does Trump feel as strongly as he did in February when he told a National Rifle Association gathering that if elected, he will reverse Biden-era gun restrictions? I think I know the answer, but I’d like to hear it, in that context, in his words.

Now that Kamala Harris has flip-flopped on fracking, Medicare for all, and border patrol, does her sudden lurch to the center apply to policing? After George Floyd died due to police brutality in Minnesota — her running mate’s home state — Senator Harris co-sponsored legislation to ban police from using chokeholds and to create a national police misconduct registry. If she’s running away from so many of her former positions, would she backtrack here too? And what’s her take on the Secret Service’s failures to protect her opponent?

3. Anti-Semitism and pro-terrorism

Anti-Semitism has reached unprecedented and frightening dimensions, and college campuses nationwide have become radicalized, with new horror stories emerging every day of Jewish students being bullied and intimidated. Can Harris defend or disavow President Biden’s statement that the pro-Hamas protestors in Chicago at the recent Democratic convention “have a point”? What’s the point?

The State Department designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, under the Democratic Clinton administration. How would Harris classify people who demonstrate on behalf of a terrorist organization? Harris too excused pro-Hamas demonstrations during the course of the summer, saying: “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject… but we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”

This could be a case of selective empathy, because Harris and other leading Democrats constantly accuse Trump of fomenting hate and racism among his supporters on the political right.

They’ve got emotions too. Does Harris understand the emotion behind them?

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1027)