A26 TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019
NTO THE EDITOR:
Re “Moon Shot Accomplished, Now
to Save Our Planet” (news article,
July 20):
The growing calls for “a moon
shot for climate change” are en-
couraging. But unlike the moon
landing 50 years ago, this time
women should be equally front and
center, helping lead the fight
against climate change. And on this
we have a long way to go.
Women make up less than 20
percent of the clean energy work
force and 15 percent of jobs in oil
and gas companies, which are
advancing their investments in
renewable energy. Having more
women in powerful positions in
these fields helps increase innova-
tion. And Yale reports that women
are “slightly more likely than men
to be concerned about the envi-
ronment and have stronger pro-
climate opinions and beliefs.”
At the government level and in
local communities around the
world, women’s leadership im-
proves outcomes of climate-related
projects.
Women did play significant roles
behind the scenes in the moon
landing, as recent reports attest.
But this time, let’s tackle this monu-
mental challenge together equally.KATIE MEHNERT, HOUSTON
The writer is chief executive of Pink
Petro and Experience Energy. She
testified before the House Committee
on Energy and Commerce this year.Women and Climate
TO THE EDITOR:
“Scrubbing a Name From a Mu-
seum” (Arts pages, July 22) raises
a much broader question in dis-
cussing the Louvre’s decision to
remove “the Sackler name from its
Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiqui-
ties, following an outcry over the
role of some Sackler family mem-
bers in the production and promo-
tion of the opioid painkiller Oxy-
Contin” and the decision of other
institutions to retain the name.
The larger question is handled in
depth in the book “Winners Take
All: The Elite Charade of Changing
the World,” by Anand Girid-
haradas, which details the history
of American fortunes forged by
dirty means, then laundered by
philanthropy. Until our culture
addresses more explicitly the
reality that money and power can
be a two-edged sword, both ruining
lives and doing good, we will be
the hapless victims of such toxic
practices.JAMES BERKMAN, BOSTONThe Donor at the Museum
TO THE EDITOR:
Re “Trump Calls a House Critic’s
Baltimore District a ‘Rat and Ro-
dent Infested Mess’” (news article,
July 28), about the president’s
attack on Representative Elijah E.
Cummings:
I know that Donald Trump was
surprised to become president of
the United States. But one respon-
sibility that comes with this job is
that you are now the leader of this
country, and every city, suburb,
town, rural area and congressional
district is yours to uplift and im-
prove. Thus, you should be work-
ing closely with all districts to
make them better.
Instead, with spite mixed with
inaccuracy, the tweeter in chief
once again shows that he is unfit
for this office, and I am not even
referring to conspiracy with the
Russians and obstruction of jus-
tice.
PHILIP S. HART, LOS ANGELESTO THE EDITOR:
It may have been about the same
time that President Trump was
preparing to spew his hateful
words about Baltimore. But in
Baltimore on Friday, Mauricio
Velazquez Rodriguez thrilled our
hearts with his story in his accept-
ance speech for the CollegeBound
Foundation scholar of the year
award at a lunch to celebrate high
school graduates from local public
schools who will be off to college in
the fall, with scholarships from the
foundation, a local group.
Mauricio came to Baltimore
from a tiny town in Mexico —
alone, at 13, to live with his mom,
speaking no English. He had de-
cided that he wanted a better
education, and he figured that he
could achieve that — yes, Presi-
dent Trump — in the Baltimorepublic schools.
With remarkable personal effort,
and with the help of devoted teach-
ers, coaches and counselors, this
gifted, good-hearted young man
was admitted to Brown University
with a full scholarship.
Baltimore is living through a
much-publicized, challenging time.
It is true that we are sometimes
dispirited. But many promising
students like Mauricio are the hope
for our future, and they deserve
words of inspiration.
Yet we have a president whose
words are weapons from which we
have to protect vulnerable children.
His words are wounding. He has
the power to make adults cry with
their dehumanizing cruelty. Can
you imagine the effect they may
have on sensitive adolescents?
I wonder what would it be like to
have a president who inspires
instead of denigrates.
Oh yes, I remember.ROBIN WEISS, BALTIMORETO THE EDITOR:
To: Republican Members of Con-
gress
Re: Trump’s racist comments
about the squad, Representative
Elijah E. Cummings, the Maryland
Democrat, and the Rev. Al Sharpton
From: Abraham Lincoln
“To sin by silence when they
should protest makes cowards of
men.”KITTY KELLEY, WASHINGTON
The writer is the author and biogra-
pher.TO THE EDITOR:
If President Trump believes that
Baltimore has deficiencies that
make it a bad place for Americans
to live, then as the president of all
Americans, he should propose a
remedy to improve conditions.
A comprehensive infrastructure
bill would be a good place to start.
GERTRUDE KAPPEL, RALEIGH, N.C.Trump vs. Baltimore: Stinging Words
LETTERSLET’S GET THEobvious stuff out of the
way. Yes, Donald Trump is a vile racist.
He regularly uses dehumanizing lan-
guage about nonwhites, including mem-
bers of Congress. And while some argue
that this is a cynical strategy designed to
turn out Trump’s base, it is at most a
strategy that builds on Trump’s pre-ex-
isting bigotry. He would be saying these
things regardless (and was saying such
things long before he ran for president);
his team is simply trying to turn bigoted
lemons into political lemonade.
What I haven’t seen pointed out much,
however, is that Trump’s racism rests on
a vision of America that is decades out of
date. In his mind it’s always 1989. And
that’s not an accident: The ways Amer-
ica has changed over the past three dec-
ades, both good and bad, are utterly in-
consistent with Trump-style racism.
Why 1989? That was the year he de-
manded bringing back the death penalty
in response to the case of the Central
Park Five, black and Latino teenagers
convicted of raping a white jogger in
Central Park. They were, in fact, inno-
cent; their convictions were vacated in
- Trump, nevertheless, has refused
to apologize or admit that he was wrong.
His behavior then and later was vi-
cious, and it is no excuse to acknowledge
that at the time America was suffering
from a crime wave. Still, there was in-
deed such a wave, and it was fairly com-
mon to talk about social collapse in inner-
city urban communities.
But Trump doesn’t seem to be aware
that times have changed. His vision of
“American carnage” is one of a nation
whose principal social problem is inner-
city violence, perpetrated by nonwhites.
That’s a comfortable vision if you’re a
racist who considers nonwhites inferior.
But it’s completely wrong as a picture of
America today.
For one thing, violent crime has fallen
drastically since the early 1990s, espe-
cially in big cities. Our cities certainly
aren’t perfectly safe, and some cities —
like Baltimore — haven’t shared in the
progress. But the social state of urban
America is vastly better than it was.
On the other hand, the social state of
rural America — whiterural America —
is deteriorating. To the extent that there
really is such a thing as American car-nage — and we are in fact seeing rising
age-adjusted mortality and declining life
expectancy — it’s concentrated among
less-educated whites, especially in rural
areas, who are suffering from a surge in
“deaths of despair” from opioids, suicide
and alcohol that has pushed their mortal-
ity rates above those of African-Ameri-
cans.
And indicators of social collapse, like
the percentage of prime-age men notworking, have also surged in the small
town and rural areas of the “eastern
heartland,” with its mostly white popula-
tion.
What this says to me is that the racists,
and even those who claimed that there
was some peculiar problem with black
culture, were wrong, and the sociologist
William Julius Wilson was right.
When social collapse seemed to be ba-
sically a problem for inner-city blacks, itwas possible to argue that its roots lay in
some unique cultural dysfunction, and
quite a few commentators hinted — or in
some cases declared openly — that there
was something about being nonwhite
that predisposed people toward antiso-
cial behavior.
What Wilson argued, however, was
that social dysfunction was an effect, not
a cause. His work, culminating in the
justly celebrated book “When Work Dis-
appears,” made the case that declining
job opportunities for urban workers,
rather than some underlying cultural or
racial disposition, explained the decline
in prime-age employment, the decline of
the traditional family, and more.
How might one test Wilson’s hypothe-
sis? Well, you could destroy job opportu-
nities for a number of white people, and
see if they experienced a decline in
propensity to work, stopped forming sta-
ble families, and so on. And sure enough,
that’s exactly what has happened to
parts of nonmetropolitan America effec-
tively stranded by a changing economy.
I’m not saying that there’s something
wrong or inferior about the inhabitants
of, say, eastern Kentucky (and no Ameri-can politician would dare suggest such a
thing).
On the contrary: What the changing
face of American social problems shows
is that people are pretty much the same,
whatever the color of their skin. Give
them reasonable opportunities for eco-
nomic and personal advancement, and
they will thrive; deprive them of those
opportunities, and they won’t.
Which brings us back to Trump and his
attack on Representative Elijah Cum-
mings, whom he accused of representing
a district that is a “mess” where “no hu-
man being would want to live.” Actually,
part of the district is quite affluent and
well educated, and in any case, Trump is
debasing his office by, in effect, asserting
that some Americans don’t deserve polit-
ical representation.
But the real irony is that if you ask
which congressional districts really are
“messes” in the sense of suffering from
severe social problems, many — proba-
bly most — strongly supported Trump in- And Trump is, of course, doing
nothing to help those districts. All he has
to offer is hate. 0
PAUL KRUGMAN
A Racist Stuck in the Past
In Donald Trump’s
mind, it’s still 1989.
The Times welcomes letters from read-
ers. Letters must include the writer’s
name, address and telephone number.
Those selected may be edited, and short-
ened to fit allotted space. Email: letters
@nytimes.comIt’s crunchtime for the Democratic presidential candidates.
The second set of debates will air live from Detroit on Tues-
day and Wednesday — with 20 contenders split evenly
between the two nights — and the four-hour spectacle is
being pitched as an elimination round worthy of “The Bach-
elorette.” The debates scheduled for September and Octo-
ber have a higher threshold for participation in terms of
poll numbers and campaign donations, which means that,
among the more marginal candidates, those who fail to
distinguish themselves in this show-
down might not get another shot.
The candidate with the most on the
line isn’t a fringe player like Marianne
Williamson or John Delaney. (To re-
view: She’s a self-help guru; he’s a
former congressman from Maryland.
Do not feel bad if this is the first you’ve
heard of them.) Rather, it’s the pack’s
front-runner, Joe Biden, slated to ap-pear on Wednesday. The former vice president’s perform-
ance in the first round of debates last month was, to put it
gently, unsettling. When Senator Kamala Harris went after
him on the issue of busing for school integration, Mr. Biden
crumbled like a stale cracker — and never fully recovered.
With his halting speech and occasionally befuddled de-
meanor, Mr. Biden didn’t simply leave Democrats question-
ing whether he can beat President Trump; people across
the political spectrum were openly musing about whether
he is too old to handle another White House run. When the
debate clock ran out on one of his answers, prompting Mr.
Biden to mumble, “My time is up. I’m sorry,” the attack ads
began writing themselves.
There’s intense pressure on him to obliterate the memory
of this stumble. Democrats are desperate for a winner, and
Mr. Biden’s core appeal for many is the sense that he is
their safest bet — not exciting, or even inspiring, but an
experienced, centrist pragmatist unlikely to scare the older,
whiter, more moderate, less woke voters whom the party is
itching to woo back. If Mr. Biden starts to look risky, for
whatever reason, he loses his competitive advantage. The
question then becomes: Who can take over the slow-and-
steady lane that he has been dominating?
Even strong candidates can have a weak debate showing.
In 2012, President Barack Obama’s poor performance in his
first matchup against Mitt Romney prompted panic in
Democratic circles. Fair or not, Mr. Biden’s margin for error
here is smaller. This is in part an issue of basic biology.
Now 76, he would be the oldest person ever elected presi-
dent. (Ronald Reagan was 73 at the start of his second
term.) Mr. Biden first ran for president more than three
decades ago. Questions about whether he is “slipping” are
perhaps inevitable. Mr. Trump, despite his own advanced
age at 73, has been his usual subtle self, suggesting that the
former vice president is “losing it.”
Mr. Biden is hardly an outlier in the Democratic field
when it comes to age. Senator Elizabeth Warren is 70. Sen-
ator Bernie Sanders is 77. Mike Gravel is 89 — not that
most people know he’s in this race.
No, it’s more than age — Mr. Biden’s political identity is
also backward-looking. While Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren
are aiming to give America a hard shove forward, Mr. Bi-
den is more about hitting the reset button, taking the nation
back to the relative sanity of the pre-Trump era.
Team Biden recognizes that he is not the candidate of the
future. Early on, he and his campaign toyed with the idea of
positioning him as a one-term place-holder president, a
seasoned statesman ready to rescue American democracy
from the national emergency that is Donald Trump. As part
of this, they were going to do an early rollout of a fresh-
faced, dynamic running mate — maybe Kamala Harris or
Beto O’Rourke or Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s former House
Democratic leader who narrowly lost her race for governor
last year. As The Times noted in March, this plan carried
potential downsides, including drawing even more atten-
tion to Mr. Biden’s age and making him look presumptuous
for naming a running mate before a single vote had been
cast. Those risks look all the riskier now.
Whatever specific topics Mr. Biden must confront in his
debate this week — for instance, he’s expected to clash
again with Ms. Harris over racial issues — he’s selling the
idea that the nation can move forward from the Trump era
by taking a step back. While potentially appealing to those
nostalgic for the Obama years, this is a more muddled, less
compelling vision than the ones being pitched by some of
his primary competitors — not to mention Mr. Trump’s
simplistic, revanchist demagogy.
If Mr. Biden does not deliver on Wednesday, the narra-
tive will harden that, as he so unfortunately suggested, his
time is indeed up, opening space for some of the second-
and third-tier moderates who have been languishing in his
shadow. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet,
Representative Tim Ryan, Gov. Steve Bullock, former Gov.
John Hickenlooper and Mr. Delaney have much to prove
this week as well, as they work to sell themselves as the
most viable alternative to Mr. Biden. (Centrists who did not
make it into this debate round, such as Joe Sestak, the
former congressman and retired Navy admiral, will be
scrambling for another way to elbow their way into the
conversation.) For those whose campaigns have been
struggling to gain traction and who are at risk of not mak-
ing the cut for the next debates, the stakes are especially
high.
The energy and excitement of the Democratic Party may
be coming from its left flank these days. But in this round of
debates, most of the drama is swirling around its lower key,
less electrifying moderates. They may not be leading a
revolution, but they’re hoping to sell voters on their ver-
sions of change nonetheless.EDITORIAL OBSERVERMICHELLE COTTLE
Who Will Win This Week’s Debates?
KATHRYN GAMBLE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES