Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 374

The President Defends His Iran Plan

On Wednesday at American University, Barack Obama made the case for the Iran nuclear agreement, and against its critics, in a long and detailed speech. The official transcript is here; the C-Span video is here. Later that afternoon, the president met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with nine journalists to talk for another 90 minutes about the thinking behind the plan, and its likely political and strategic effects.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was one of the people at that session, and he plans to write about some aspects of the discussion. Slate’s Fred Kaplan was another, and his report is here. I was there as well and will try to convey some of the texture and highlights.

Procedural note: The session was on the record, so reporters could quote everything the president said. We were allowed to take notes in real time, including typing them out on computers, but we were not allowed to use audio recorders. Direct quotes here have been checked against an internal transcript the White House made.

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Why the Iran Deal’s Critics Will Probably Lose

Nothing in the substance of Obama’s remarks would come as a surprise to people who heard his speech earlier that day or any of his comments in the weeks since the Iran deal was struck—most notably, his answers at the very long press conference he held last month. Obama made a point of this constancy. Half a dozen times, he began answers with, “As I said in the speech...” When one reporter observed that the American University address “reads like a lot of your other speeches,” Obama cut in to say jauntily, “I’m pretty consistent!,” which got a laugh.

But although the arguments are familiar, it is still different to hear them in a conversational rather than formal-oratorical setting. Here are some of the aspects that struck me.

* * *

Intellectual and Strategic Confidence

This is one micron away from the trait that Obama-detractors consider his arrogance and aloofness, so I’ll try to be precise about the way it manifested itself.

On the arguments for and against the deal, Obama rattled them off as he did in his speech and at his all-Iran July 15 press conference: You think this deal is flawed? Give me a better alternative. You think its inspection provisions are weak? Look at the facts and you’ll see that they’re more intrusive and verifiable than any other ever signed. You think because Iran’s government is extremist and anti-Semitic we shouldn’t negotiate with it? It’s because Iran has been an adversary that we need to negotiate limits, just as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with the evil and threatening Soviet Union. You think that rejecting this deal will somehow lead to a “better” deal? Well, let’s follow the logic and see why you’re wrong.

It’s the follow the logic theme I want to stress. Obama is clearly so familiar with these arguments that he was able to present them rapid-fire and as if each were a discrete paragraph in a legal brief. (At other times he spoke with great, pause-filled deliberation, marking his way through the sentence word by word.) And most paragraphs in that brief seemed to end, their arguments don’t hold up or, follow the logic or, it doesn’t make sense or, I don’t think you’ll find the weakness in my logic. You’ll see something similar if you read through his AU speech.

The real-world context for Obama’s certainty on these points is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.

There is practically no other big strategic point on which the U.S., Russia, and China all agree—but they held together on this deal. (“I was surprised that Russia was able to compartmentalize the Iran issue, in light of the severe tensions that we have over Ukraine,” Obama said.) The French, Germans, and British stayed together too, even though they don’t always see eye-to-eye with America on nuclear issues. High-stakes measures don’t often get through the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote; this deal did.

The context for Obama’s certainty is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.

Some hardliners in Iran don’t like the agreement, as Obama frequently points out, and it has ramifications for many countries in the Middle East. But in Washington, only two blocs are actively urging the U.S. Congress to reject it. One is of course the U.S. Republican Party. The other is the Netanyahu administration in Israel plus a range of Israelis from many political parties—though some military and intelligence officials in Israel have dissented from Benjamin Netanyahu’s condemnation of the deal.

Obama has taken heat for pointing out in his speech that “every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support.” But that’s the plain truth. As delivered, this line of his speech was very noticeably stressed in the way I show:

I recognize that Prime Minister Netanyahu disagrees—disagrees strongly. I do not doubt his sincerity. But I believe he is wrong. … And as president of the United States, it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.

To bring this back to the theme of confidence: In this conversation, as in the speech, Obama gave Netanyahu and other Israeli critics credit for being sincere but misinformed. As for the GOP? Misinformed at best. “The fact that there is a robust debate in Congress is good,” he said in our session. “The fact that the debate sometimes seems unanchored to facts is not so good. ... [We need] to return to some semblance of bipartisanship and soberness when we approach these problems.” (I finished this post while watching the Fox News GOP debate, which gave “semblance of bipartisanship and soberness” new meaning.)

Obama’s intellectual confidence showed through in his certainty that if people looked at the facts and logic, they would come down on his side. His strategic confidence came through in his asserting that as a matter of U.S. national interest, “this to me is not a close call—and I say that based on having made a lot of tough calls.” Most foreign-policy judgments, he said, ended up being “judgments based on percentages,” and most of them “had hair,” the in-house term for complications. Not this one, in his view:

“When I see a situation like this one, where we can achieve an objective with a unified world behind us, and we preserve our hedge against it not working out, I think it would be foolish—even tragic—for us to pass up on that opportunity.”

If you agree with the way Obama follows these facts to these conclusions, as I do, you’re impressed by his determination to fight this out on the facts (rather than saying, 2009 fashion, “We’ll listen to good ideas from all sides”). If you disagree, I can see how his Q.E.D./brainiac certainty could grate.

* * *

Awareness of the Intellectual and Strategic Unknown

Obama missed no chance to push right back if there was a question or a premise he disagreed with.

For instance: After he’d given a discourse about the risks of accidental war with a nuclear-armed Iran, one reporter asked him, “Do you have a head count on the Hill?” Obama immediately shot back, “Come on! We’re having a big geopolitical conversation!” It was with a laugh, but he moved right on to the next questioner. When another questioner began by asking for Plan B if he lost the congressional vote, Obama said (essentially): I’m going to stop you right there and give you a chance to ask a question that I will answer. I’m not going to answer this one because, “I make it a point not to anticipate failure.”

There’s a contrast between Obama’s certitude on the facts and logic of the deal, and his agnosticism about the major social and strategic shifts that might ensue.

But Obama did engage one string of questions whose premise he challenged. The questions involved whether he was naively placing too much faith in the idea that Iran’s reconnection with the world would liberalize its society and undermine its extremist leaders.

Obama disagreed with the premise because, he said, the deal made no assumptions about what might happen in Iran. E.g., “There is nothing in this deal that is dependent on a transformation of the character of the Iranian regime. … This is a hard-headed, clear-eyed, calculated decision … to seize our best opportunity to lock down the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear weapon.”

That’s consistent with the case he’s been making all along. I was more interested in what he said next, when asked directly about what he expected to occur in Iran. The question was: Let’s not talk about assumptions built into the deal. Please tell us what you, President Obama, think will happen in Iran if the deal goes through. He answered,

I just don’t know.

When Nixon went to China, Mao was still in power. He had no idea how that was going to play out. He didn’t know that Deng Xiaoping suddenly comes in … and the next thing you know you’ve got this state capitalism on the march. You couldn’t anticipate that.

When the first arms-control treaties were entered into with the Soviet Union, nobody was anticipating that at some point the entire system—well, maybe George Kennan was anticipating it—but at some point, the system rots to the point where the Berlin Wall comes down. You have a more immediate objective, which is let’s make sure that we’re not triggering nuclear war...

I was the first president to visit Burma—after 40 years of as repressive a regime as there is. And we still don’t know yet how that experiment plays itself out. But what we do know is suddenly there’s this opening, this space. … We’ve created a possibility for change.

He went on to say that he was more confident about predicting changes in Cuba, because “that’s a small country which has almost a unique relationship to us.” As for Iran?

Iran is the latest expression of a deep, ancient, powerful culture that’s different than ours. And we don’t know how it’s going to play itself out. But as I said before, it’s not necessary for us to be optimistic in order for us to assess the value of this deal. If you believe that Tehran will not change, and the latest version of the current supreme leader is in charge 10, 15 years from now … you’d still want this deal. In fact, you want this deal even more.

The fantasy, the naiveté, the optimism, is to think that we reject this deal and somehow it all solves itself with a couple of missile strikes—that is not sound foreign policy.

My point: It can be as revealing to hear people talk about what they don’t or can’t know as what they do. In our evolving understanding of Obama, I mean to highlight the contrast between his certitude on facts-and-logic of the deal, and his agnosticism about these major social and strategic shifts that might ensue.

* * *

Or Else, War

Many critics of the deal, and some supporters and others in the press, are furious about what they feel is Obama’s scare-tactic false choice: If you don’t vote for this deal, you’re voting for war. Here was the Israeli Embassy’s reaction:

From the Israeli Embassy’s Twitter feed on Thursday

Eli Lake, of Bloomberg, lamented Obama’s stooping to the “politics of fear.”

This sensitivity to fear-mongering is selective at best, considering the apocalyptic tone of many arguments against the deal. I mention it because in the conversation on Wednesday, Obama was asked about it directly. His answer, which was even longer than I will relay here (but similar to what he has said in his speeches), was simply to move through the chain of logic link by link:

First, the U.S. Congress rejects the deal. The secretary of state has negotiated it; the president has endorsed it; the UN has approved it; so have all other involved governments. But the U.S. will not take part. What then?

Next, “at a minimum, what we’ve done is we’ve put Iran in the driver’s seat. And Iran could make various decisions here, none of which are good for us, and all of which are good for them.” Logically, what would those options be?

“They could decide to pull out of the comprehensive deal or the interim deal, put the entire blame on the United States, and proceed with their R&D, their research, the installation of more advanced centrifuges, claiming the entire time that these are all still peaceful. They would have been willing to defer on the installation of some of those centrifuges in exchange for sanctions relief, but since the U.S. Congress refused to be reasonable, they’re going to go ahead—in which case, the scenario that everybody talks about happening 15 years from now happens six, nine, 12 months from now.”

“Alternatively, they could say, ‘We’re going to go ahead and abide by the deal despite what the U.S. Congress says,’ and put our partners—Russia, China, as well as the Europeans—on notice that they’re ready to do business...”

“It’s hard to conceive of Russia and China not taking full advantage of that—not only because of commercial purposes, but because of the enormous propaganda boom that it provides them at a time when the entire story they’re telling around the world is that U.S. hegemony is over, that we need an entirely new set of global institutions that are more reflective of the balance of power.”

Would the Russians and Chinese, as Netanyahu has claimed, simply forget about the current deal and join in a GOP-dictated request for tougher sanctions? “Inconceivable,” Obama said. The way he actually put it was:

And if we now had Congress reject an initiative that a U.S. president and a U.S. secretary of state had led and that now has virtually universal approval, then it is inconceivable that President Xi or President Putin or, for that matter, a number of our European partners would then say, ‘We’ll just do what Tom Cotton has to say with respect to our geopolitical interests.’

There’s a lot more to the chain of logic, but at its end, according to the president, is an Iran much closer to nuclear-weapon capacity than it would be under the deal, and a United States with no leverage other than the military to deal with it. And what comes with that final link?

So in almost every scenario, our ability to monitor what’s happening in Iran, our ability to ensure that they are not breaking out, our ability to inspect their facilities, our ability to force them to abide by the deal has gone out the window.

And as I said in the speech, everybody around this table knows that within six months or nine months—I don’t know how long it would take—of Iran having pulled out of this deal, or cheated on this deal, or interpreted the deal in a way that was deemed contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of the deal, that some of the same voices who were opposed to the deal would insist that the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to take strikes. And it will be framed as limited military strikes, and it will be suggested that Iran will not respond. But we will have entered into a war.

That doesn’t mean that Iran suddenly attacks us directly. It does mean that I’ve got a whole bunch of U.S. troops on the ground trying to help Baghdad fight ISIL, and they’re now looking over their shoulders with a host of Shia militia. It does mean that Hezbollah potentially makes use of some of those rockets into Israel, which then precipitates us having to take action. It does mean that the Strait of Hormuz suddenly becomes a live theater in which one member of the IRGC, or Quds Force, or [Iranian Quds Force commander] Mr. Soleimani directs a suicide speedboat crashing into one of our naval ships, in which case I think it’s fair to say that the commander in chief of the United States will be called upon to respond.

So when he says it’s the deal, or war, this is the case he is making. “I do not say that a military option is inevitable just to be provocative, just to win the argument. Those are the dictates of cold, hard logic.”

Agree with him or not, to classify this as “fear-mongering,” on a topic where presidential candidates are talking about “leading to the door of the oven” and a “declaration of war on Israel,” is to stretch that term beyond meaning. (And a new term altogether would be useful for the irrepressible Dick Cheney, who most recently said that the deal would make “the actual use of nuclear weapons more likely.”)

* * *

The Mindset

In addition to “the deal or war,” the part of the AU speech most calculated to infuriate opponents was Obama’s emphasis on “the mindset.” By this he meant a general over-reliance on military responses—“we shortchange our influence and our ability to shape events when that’s the only tool we think we have in the toolbox”—and the specific, disastrous resort to a military response in invading Iraq.

Obama is fully aware that bringing up Iraq is a “divider, not a unifier” move. The Munich agreement, nearly 80 years in the past, is rolled out whenever anyone wants to criticize a modern-day treaty. The Iraq misjudgments, so much more recent and involving so many still-active figures from both parties, are trickier to bring up. Obama made clear that he wanted to highlight rather than obscure the connection between the thinking that led the United States into Iraq and the arguments that oppose this deal. He said:

I also think that there is a particular mindset that was on display in the run-up to the Iraq War that continues to this day. Some of the folks who were involved in that decision either don’t remember what they said or are entirely unapologetic about the results, but that views the Middle East as a place where force and intimidation will deliver on the security interests that we have, and that it is not possible for us to at least test the possibility of diplomacy.

And I’ll leave it to you guys to do the political analysis of why those views are most prominent now in the Republican Party. I’ll leave it at that.

Obama wouldn’t be talking this way if he thought he could bring any of those Republicans to his side of the argument. He doesn’t. “The degree of polarization that currently exists in Washington is such where I think it’s fair to say if I presented a cure for cancer”—he was saying this jokingly, and it drew a laugh—“getting legislation passed to move that forward would be a nail-biter.”

* * *

The Art of the Possible

One reporter asked Obama whether he was upset that the deal would, at best, squeak by in Congress. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate will almost certainly pass a measure condemning it; Obama will certainly veto that; and the deal’s survival will depend on denying opponents the two-thirds majority they would need in both the House and the Senate to override his veto.

Is that an inglorious way to prevail? He said no. “My main concern is simply to be able to implement the deal, and then make sure that, globally, we put in place the structure to make it stick.” And a little later,  “I’m less concerned about the point spread. I’m more concerned about getting it done.”

His final words before he shook our hands and left were, “Nothing is easy in this town”—he has been in Washington long enough to say this town. “But it’s all worthwhile.”

Trump's Narcissism Obscures His Outrage

Saying that Donald Trump performed poorly in last night’s debate is stating the obvious. By any sane standard he’s been performing poorly since he entered the race. Yet he’s leading in the polls.

Still, last night Trump didn’t even do obnoxious well. The reason, I suspect, is that to debate effectively, even if you’re a goon, you must talk about something other than yourself.

Again and again, the Fox News anchors asked Trump about appalling things he’s said and done. The obvious response would have been to pivot away from those subjects, perhaps by attacking the media for focusing on trivial things, and then slam Mexicans, President Obama and the other candidates—all the things Republicans love to hear Trump do. But Trump couldn’t do it because he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk about himself.

It started right at the beginning. Fox News’ Bret Baier asked if all the candidates would pledge to support the Republican nominee in the general election. Trump refused. When given the opportunity to explain, he should have said something like, “Brett, I’m don’t care about political parties. I care about stopping illegal immigration and kicking China’s ass. If we don’t nominate someone who can do that, I won’t support him. And if Reince Priebus doesn’t like it, too bad.” Many Republican voters, who also don’t care about the Republican Party, would have cheered.

Instead, Trump boasted about how well he’s doing (“I’m leading by quite a bit”) and implied that he’d only support the GOP nominee if that person kissed his ring (“I’m, you know, talking about a lot of leverage”). He failed, in other words, to make the case that his candidacy is about anything beyond than himself.

He failed to make the case that his candidacy is about anything beyond than himself.

A bit later, Megyn Kelly asked Trump about calling “women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.’” You don’t have to be James Carville to realize that Trump should have changed the subject as fast as possible. Instead, he replied that those comments were about “only Rosie O’Donnell,” as if that’s an effective defense. After Kelly insisted that he had slurred other women too, Trump did finally pivot, saying, “I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.”

The crowd loved it. But then, inexplicably, Trump returned to his relationship with women, remarking that, “What I say is what I say. And honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me.” In other words, he admitted that he’s been a jerk to women and then offered a fresh example by condescending his questioner. Well done.

Later, Chris Wallace noted that “Trump corporations, casinos and hotels, have declared bankruptcy four times over the last quarter-century” and as a result, “lenders to your companies lost billions of dollars.” Trump should have pivoted, in this case from his own economic problems to America’s.

But yet again, Trump instead talked about himself. “I have used the laws of this country just like the greatest people that you read about every day in business have used the laws of this country, the chapter laws, to do a great job for my company,” Trump replied, thereby acknowledging that he’d used the bankruptcy process to enrich himself and screw his investors. A few seconds later he boasted that, “I had the good sense to leave Atlantic City,” as if Americans should applaud him for contributing to an American city’s economic collapse.

It went on like that.

A certain portion of the Republican base loves Trump’s “authenticity.” They like the fact that he says “politically incorrect” (i.e., borderline racist and sexist) things and when challenged by the “liberal” media (which evidently includes Fox News), doesn’t back down. They don’t mind that Trump’s a narcissist so long as his narcissism fuels his outrage at the people they resent.

But too often last night, Trump’s narcissism got in the way of that outrage. If you live by the ego, you can die by it too.

Jon Stewart’s Humble, Remarkable Farewell

After nearly 17 years as the star, Jon Stewart tried his best to make his final night at The Daily Show about anyone but himself—and he almost succeeded. On Thursday, Stewart wheeled out a parade of current and former correspondents, aired taped goodbyes from longtime rivals, and paid tribute to the show’s behind-the-scenes crew with a lengthy, faux-single-shot segment. When his longtime correspondent and friend Stephen Colbert appeared to give an impromptu speech about Stewart’s contribution to their lives, the host squirmed in his chair, choking up, waiting for the moment to end. It was a warm reminder that for all the lionizing of Stewart’s TV persona over the years, he’s always been happy to share the spotlight.

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Sure, there were many moments during his tenure where Stewart would use the show as a platform to bring about change he cared about. Every look back at the history of The Daily Show includes his impassioned on-air rant against CNN’s Crossfire (which led to its swift cancellation), his advocacy for the James Zadroga Act that provides healthcare for Ground Zero workers, his “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the Washington Mall. But Stewart was first and foremost a comedian, and from start to finish, it was clear he took the most delight in playing the befuddled straight man as his correspondents and guests acted out opposite him.

When Stewart took over The Daily Show in 1999, it was nothing more than a Comedy Central take on the classic late-night show, crunched into a bite-sized half-hour and focusing mostly on the day’s pop-culture tidbits. Under Craig Kilborn, it was a lot of Monica Lewinsky jokes and segments like “This Day in Hasselhoff History.” Stewart refocused on news and politics and allowed correspondents like Colbert to define their own “characters” on the show. That way, their bits together felt less like scripted banter and more like an ongoing dialogue between Stewart’s sane but exasperated host and the ever-louder, ever-crazier voices of the pundit world.

It was a beat that seemed to expand with every passing year the show aired, but Stewart’s frustration always stayed on the same even keel that he showed on that Crossfire appearance. While he was happy to joke around about it night after night, he genuinely thought the nightly structure of a right vs. left debate that played out on news channels was harming the country. When Stewart announced his decision to retire from The Daily Show earlier this year, he referenced a growing weariness at his role as cable-news watchdog, saying, “This show doesn’t deserve an even slightly restless host and neither do you.” As he signed off, that weariness was apparent.

“Bullshit is everywhere,” Stewart told the camera in last night’s episode, his one big sendoff moment that actually focused on him, a final screed against a polarized news media and obfuscating political class that drove him so gently mad over the last 16-and-a-half years. “The good news is this: bullshitters have gotten pretty lazy, and their work is easily detected. And looking for it is kind of a pleasant way to pass the time, like an I Spy of bullshit. So I say to you tonight, my friends, the best defense against bullshit is vigilance—so if you smell something, say something.”

Stewart’s rants served to grab the audience by the lapels and remind them not to listen to the noise of cable news, that the correct answer was usually the most rational one.

It was the kind of speech (to his old friend, Camera Three) that Stewart often delivered, sometimes manic, sometimes sarcastic, in his tenure on the show. In later years, these monologues became their own strange form of online content, producing endless streams of aggregated articles demanding the viewer watch him “destroy” or “eviscerate” some politician or pressing issue. But Stewart (to his credit) was never much of an online creature. His rants served not to destroy, but to shake the viewer out of a supposed reverie, to grab the audience by the lapels and remind them not to listen to the noise of cable news, that the correct answer was usually the most rational one.

Over the years, younger audiences came to rely on Stewart as some strange blend of moral polestar and media truth-teller. Stewart liked to loudly insist that The Daily Show was just “the fake news,” and that he was a simple joke-huckster having a little fun at Fox News’s expense, but by the time he was staging a rally on the Washington Mall, he clearly had an understanding of his generational appeal. The way he stayed relevant, though, was by keeping the show light and funny 99 percent of the time, allowing new crops of correspondents to come through and make their own stamps on the show, and never hijacking his fame for cheap hits.

So while Stewart’s farewell monologue on bullshit was certainly on brand, Colbert’s unscripted goodbye (which, delightfully, caught Stewart off-guard) was the emotional high point of the evening. “We learned from you by example how to do a show with intention, how to work with clarity, how to treat people with respect,” Colbert said as Stewart buried his face in his hands. “I know you are not asking for this, but on behalf of so many people whose lives you changed over the past 16 years: Thank you.”

Though Colbert was speaking for the large cast and crew who have passed through The Daily Show studio over the years, he also tapped into the sentiments of a grateful audience. Like Carson or Letterman, Stewart defined intelligent broadcast comedy for a generation of TV-watchers, and his show always had the kind of intent, clarity and intelligence Colbert spoke of, defined by a community larger than its titular star. For 16 years, The Daily Show was a reliable source of perceptive criticism that never forgot to be funny, and that alone is an achievement the medium may find impossible to match.

Who Won the Republican Presidential Debate?

Anyone who thought that Donald Trump would take a conciliatory tack in the first Republican debate was quickly disillusioned. Chris Wallace, one of the Fox News moderators, asked if any candidate was unwilling to pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee. And Trump, offering his best, most dramatic shrug, happily refused to take the pledge.

That set the tone for the rest of the night: First, the moderators weren’t going to pull any punches. Throughout the evening, they probed the candidates’ greatest perceived weaknesses. And second, Trump had no intention of abandoning the act that’s carried him from perennial joke to the top of the Republican presidential nomination.

It was a debate marked by conversations about immigration, abortion, and foreign policy—especially about Iran. The discussion of race relations, the biggest news story of the last year, was notably sparse. It took more than 90 minutes until a candidate received a #BlackLivesMatter question, and when it came, the candidates opted to tread lightly, avoiding unforced errors.

The evening also lacked many direct battles between the candidates. That was partly a factor of the format, but when asked to critique or speak directly to an onstage rival, the hopefuls often demurred.

That made the two big battles of the night all the more notable. In the first, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul battled over terrorism and civil liberties, with Christie accusing the senator of failing to understand the threat to the nation—and Paul tartly responding that Christie failed to understand the Bill of Rights. Later, Christie tangled with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who as presented himself as a defender of entitlements for workers and seniors.

And there was Trump, of course. He was, inevitably, one of the standouts of the night. Although he mostly avoided taking direct shots at his opponents, he couldn’t resist battling the moderators. They hardly relented, asking him about boorish comments about women; his slurs against Mexican immigrants; his previous Democratic allegiance; his past description of himself as pro-choice; and his donations to Hillary Clinton.

Trump repeatedly took issue with questions and interrupted the hosts, and what he lacked in coherence or detail, he made up for in bluster and grievance. Some of the questions seemed to play directly into his hands. Whether the night was good or bad for Trump remains to be seen—I’ve learned better in recent weeks than to try to predict whether the real-estate mogul’s comments will redound to his benefit or disadvantage.

But it’s interesting to watch Trump turn his weaknesses into strengths, which he does with an ease that eludes some long-time politicians. And he has plenty of weaknesses. He seems to be betting that his clear anger can, well, trump all of those flaws. Asked about donating to Clinton, for example, Trump delivered what amounted to a rousing defense of crony capitalism, saying that as a businessman he did what he had to. Later, asked about his companies declaring bankruptcy, he insisted he was just shrewdly taking advantage of the system.

He seems to be saying to the disaffected everyman Republican who’s angry at Washington and angry at his leaders: Yes, you’re right. The system is rigged. Would you rather elect a guy who’s part of that, or a guy who sits outside it and is shrewd enough to get rich from it? The hope is that they’ll respect his hustle and his ability to take advantage of that rigging, rather than viewing him as an elite charlatan.

Among the other candidates, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush was able to make a strong impression and get lots of camera time but he also faced several difficult questions from the moderators, and he didn’t always have ready answers. Despite being asked repeatedly about the war in Iraq, Bush still doesn’t have a punchy and persuasive response (a problem he shares with Hillary Clinton). He also stumbled in replying to questions about his membership on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies and about the Common Core.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio gave one of the best performances of the night, showing why so many commentators remain bullish on his prospects despite his middling poll numbers. Rubio delivered strong and detailed answers, appearing poised and in command of his material. His best line of the night came early on, when he noted that he’d only recently paid off his student loans and asked, “How is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck?”

Yet perhaps the most surprising showing came from Chris Christie. His presidential campaign has widely been viewed as past its expiration date. But he was able to capitalize on his everyman persona Thursday night—speaking in detail, delivering his responses with passion, and picking his fights without letting his temper get the better of him.

Not everyone had such a strong night. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has consistently run alongside Bush and Trump atop polls, but his answers on Thursday night were forgettable. In his closing statement, he promised he was “aggressively normal,” but Walker’s problem in Cleveland was that the “aggressive” hardly came through. That’s not the worst-possible scenario for him: He avoided committing a serious gaffe, despite repeated questions that seemed aimed at testing his knowledge of foreign policy, and his strong showing to this point means this debate is unlikely to prove decisive for his prospects.

Ben Carson, a first-time debater and candidate, seemed listless and low-energy, and while he faithfully repeated the culture-war mantras that have won him fans, he didn’t have direct answers to almost any of the questions he fielded. (Carson did score some late points with a couple of funny jokes about brain removal in his closing statements.) Rand Paul also seemed a bit lost on stage. At his best, Paul is able to use the rest of the field as his foil, but on Thursday, he fumbled questions about Iran and foreign aid to Israel, passing up opportunities to land punches on his rivals. Beset by campaign scandal and fundraising struggles, Paul needed a strong performance, and he failed to produce one.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Huckabee, meanwhile, made up the middle of the pack and presented an interesting contrast. Both are charismatic figures vying for the social conservative vote. Cruz stuck mostly to his tried and true lines, and boasted of the long list of legislation that he has proposed in the Senate (without emphasizing the fact that none of it has become law). Huckabee, meanwhile, threw red meat to religious conservatives while playing up a populist case for entitlements.

The biggest question mark of the night is John Kasich. The Ohio governor was the last man to make it onto the stage,  polling lowest among the 10 candidates who made the cut. At times, he seemed in command, but he also didn’t have a good answer to a question about accepting Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Was his performance enough to make it to the next stage, or will a standout from the “kids’ table” debate earlier—perhaps consensus champion Carly Fiorina—take his spot? —David Graham

This liveblog is in reverse chronological order. To read it from the start of the speech, begin at the bottom.

11:12 p.m. Two important topics we didn't get any questions on: guns and climate change. One is a traditional red-meat question for conservatives in the primaries, while the other is a potentially hazardous one for the general election. It'll be interesting to see if future debates approach either issue, or if they'll fade into the background until a nominee is chosen. —Matt Ford

11:06 p.m. John Kasich strikes me as one of tonight's winners: Few Americans had heard of him, he performed relatively well, and he got a lot of applause from the home-state crowd. Qualifying for this debate was a big deal for him, and preserves his chance to rise in the polls over the coming weeks. —Conor Friedersdorf

11:00 p.m. It's unfortunate that only Ben Carson was asked about race relations. While he brings a unique perspective to it as one of the most prominent black conservatives in America, it's an issue any president will have to confront and a question every candidate deserves to answer. —Matt Ford

10:57 p.m. Rand Paul stresses that he’s a “different kind of Republican,” capable of building a bigger tent. “I’ve been to Ferguson, I’ve been to Baltimore,” he says.  And the crowd cheers. It forms a striking contrast with the closing statements of the other candidates, which only serves to further underline his point. For a much-touted candidate whose campaign has stumbled badly, it’s a rare positive moment. —Yoni Appelbaum

10:55 p.m. Fox News thought to ask about "the veterans" after 14 years of war because a woman from the audience crept up to the stage and whispered in the moderator's ear? What a strange debate. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:54 p.m. The closing question about receiving a word from God underscores how the Republican Party sometimes risks alienating secular conservatives, particularly the younger voters of the millennial generation. —Tyler Bishop

10:52 p.m. We’ve arrived at the rail-splitting and log-cabin phase of the tonight’s event, in which the presidential hopefuls of the Party of Lincoln, who number among the most powerful men in the world, compete to offer the humblest origin stories and to proclaim the greatest modesty. —Yoni Appelbaum

10:47 p.m. The banter between Chris Wallace, Megyn Kelly, and Bret Baier tonight has skated riiiiight on the line between amusing and deeply awkward. —David Graham

10:44 p.m. We're not learning a great deal from this foreign-policy focused set of questions, except that the candidates are generally in favor of military spending. —David Graham

10:43 p.m. Ben Carson is in a tough spot: He lacks either the charisma of Donald Trump or the grasp of policy displayed by the longtime elected officials. It's hard to see anything about his performance tonight that distinguishes him or will appeal to voters enough to keep him near the top of the GOP field. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:42 p.m. Bret Baier seems to be systematically pushing Scott Walker and Ben Carson, two candidates who are thought to be weakest on foreign policy, on war and diplomacy questions. They're staying general, and avoiding specific replies.  —David Graham

10:41 p.m. It’s hard to listen to the GOP rivals on foreign policy without becoming profoundly depressed. They paint a bleak picture of a world full of ruthless foes, and a United States that lacks the will, and perhaps the weaponry, to oppose them effectively. They might defend this as a bracing dose of realism. But if their answers are sprinkled with reverent references to Ronald Reagan, there is little of his optimism in their answers. —Yoni Appelbaum

10:40 p.m. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz both fielded questions about how they would respond to specific foreign policy incidents by complaining that President Obama has done a terrible job. In other words, they both evaded the question. Little surprise that the two of them often address foreign policy in the way of people who are out of their depth. They have no idea how to be good foreign policy presidents, and with their evasive answers, it shows. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:38 p.m. Bret Baier asks Cruz if China and Russia have committed acts of cyberwarfare against the U.S. "Of course they have," Cruz replies. What are the implications of accusing those two countries of acts of war? He doesn't say what actions that demands. —David Graham

10:37 p.m. Scott Walker says the most important thing we can do about policing is giving cops proper training—when politicians speak to a deeply contested debate by highlighting a stance with which literally no one disagrees, it's a sure sign that they are hiding more contentious views, and suggests a failure of leadership, insofar as they are unwilling to think through the toughest parts of the controversy or to persuade Americans that they are right about it. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:33 p.m. Megyn Kelly asks Scott Walker about #BlackLivesMatter and whether it's the civil-rights issue of our time. After an unsteady start, he cites his friend Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke on the need for better training. Most importantly for him, he avoided an "All Lives Matter" error. —David Graham

10:32 p.m. Abortion is playing a predictably large role in this debate, which comes with Planned Parenthood back in the headlines. Megyn Kelly asks Rubio about his opposition to exceptions in the cases of rape and incest, a characterization of his record that Rubio promptly disputes. But he’s not mincing words, either. “I believe that every single human being is entitled to the protection of our laws,” Rubio says. Future generations, he continues, will look back and call us barbarians for murdering millions of innocents. The answer draws cheers, but may do more to shore up Rubio’s support within the GOP than to position him for the general election. —Yoni Appelbaum

10:31 p.m. John Kasich says he recently attended a gay wedding, garnering applause. —David Graham

10:31 p.m. When the Iran nuclear deal came up earlier tonight, unsurprisingly, Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee voiced their criticisms. Paul has noted his concerns about the deal, such as sanctions relief, but, as he did Thursday night, said he's open to negotiations. Huckabee, while also opposed, offered a tamer response since coming under fire for likening the deal to the Holocaust. —Priscilla Alvarez

10:30 p.m. Marco Rubio says future generations will look back and call present day Americans "barbarians" for allowing unborn babies to be killed. And yet, when Rubio speaks about present day America's role in the world, he asserts that we are exceptional, a shining beacon of freedom, a city on a hill. There is a deep incoherence in thinking both of these things at once. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:25 p.m. Megyn Kelly asks Bush why he sat on the board of the Bloomberg Foundation, which donated to Planned Parenthood. Bush says he joined because of Bloomberg's work on education reform, and he adds that he never debated the budget. He also says that as governor he was extremely pro-life. But Bush looks like he's flailing a bit, and cozying up to Michael Bloomberg is perhaps dangerous for a Republican candidate. In fact, there are ads attacking Bloomberg's gun-control efforts airing during this very debate. —David Graham

10:19 p.m. Walker, Paul, and Huckabee all give fairly uninteresting answers on Iran. Even Paul, who is theoretically in favor of negotiations, says he opposes the deal. Walker suggests he could get allies to reimpose strict sanctions on Iran, without specifying how he’d pull that off. —David Graham

10:17 p.m. Sorry, Rand Paul: you can't win over anti-war voters by merely saying that you favor negotiating generally even as you say you'll vote against the best chance to avoid a war with Iran. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:13 p.m. Trump says, "This country owes $19 trillion, and they need someone like me to straighten out that mess." What's he going to? Declare national bankruptcy? —David Graham

10:13 p.m. Donald Trump's many bankruptcies are arguably his biggest liability. Not just literally, but also the thing most likely to tarnish his super-businessman image in the eyes of his populist supporters. Declaring bankruptcy and explaining it away sounds an awful lot like what the elite hucksters do. —Conor Friedersdorf

10:11 p.m. The spectre of Mitt Romney is haunting this debate. Many thought the 2012 debates weakened him by forcing Romney to act more conservative in the primary than a general electorate could stomach. So far, the Republican debates seem designed to prevent a repeat. Instead of testing their conservative bona fides, the questions in the first hour focused on weaknesses: Bush and dynasties, Kasich on Medicare expansion, Carson on inexperience, and Trump on, well, everything. And the moderators keep hammering the same theme: Can you beat Hillary Clinton in 2016? —Matt Ford

10:10 p.m. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee manages to do the impossible: Take a consumption tax, and make it sound sexy. When he explains that his proposal would tax everyone—including pimps, prostitutes, and other freeloaders—helping to bail out entitlements like social security, he draws cheers and whistles from the crowd. —Yoni Appelbaum

10:07 p.m. Scott Walker's triumphs in a series of battles against organized labor have vaulted him to the top tier of the Republican race. Chris Wallace just brought up the other side of that equation: Even though Walker has gotten what he wanted in that fight, Wisconsin's economic growth has been anemic. Walker doesn't have a great answer to that. —David Graham

10:07 p.m. Just once, I would like to hear a presidential candidate say, “Frankly, presidents do not dictate the health of the economy. If they knew how to do that, no one would ever run for reelection during a recession, and yet that has happened again and again to presidents and governors of both parties.” —Conor Friedersdorf

10:05 p.m. Chris Wallace presses Jeb Bush to explain why he thinks he can deliver 4 percent annual GDP growth. Bush, gamely, gives it a try. Here's why he can't. —David Graham

10:03 p.m. Ben Carson is showing his weakness and his strength all at once. Asked how he'd campaign against Hillary Clinton, he offers a strong set of culture-war arguments, including a Saul Alinsky namecheck. But he also never really said how he'd deal with attacks from Clinton, and the answer is really more of a grab-bag of random phrases than a coherent reply. —David Graham

10:02 p.m. Jeb Bush continues to stand alone in his defense of Common Core.  During his tenure as Florida governor, Bush placed emphasis on education reform, and it’s spilling into his campaign as he tells panelists that states should uphold higher education standards. —Priscilla Alvarez

9:59 p.m. John Kasich suggests that, if attacked by Hillary Clinton, he will tout economic growth and his ability to balance budgets. In response, Clinton would likely say that she, too, wants a prosperous economy, and point to her husband's time in office. Asked the same question, Ben Carson says that Clinton is the epitome of the secular progressive movement, who takes advantage of useful idiots—he promises to educate people that it's the progressives who are actually causing their problems. Neither of these responses seems very likely to successfully best Clinton's message. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:54 p.m. After Marco Rubio launches a scathing attack on federal efforts to cram standards down the throats of local communities, Jeb Bush—a staunch defender of the Common Core—replies by stressing the importance of high standards. But both frame their answers by emphasizing the importance of state and local control of education, a point that accords with the views of the Republican electorate. The exchange, though, underlines the distance traveled by the GOP since the days of No Child Left Behind, when federal standards were widely seen as necessary and beneficial. —Yoni Appelbaum

9:52 p.m. On national television, Donald Trump says he gave politicians money during a campaign and received favors from them during their term. Whether or not that fits any legal definition of corruption, it certainly shows how much influence money has in the American political system. And it's doubtful Trump is the only one who benefits from it. —Matt Ford

9:51 p.m. Credit where it's due: Donald Trump just mounted a stirring defense of crony capitalism, though it's hard to imagine that will help him much with voters. But he can't name a single favor he received for the donations he gave to the Clinton Foundation save her attendance at his wedding. —David Graham

9:50 p.m. At long last, Fox News has given Donald Trump a challenging question, pointing out his flip flops on health care. He handles it as well as he could: by reminding everyone that he has a businessman's experience dealing with the health care system. Bizarrely, by the end of his answer, other candidates on stage were suggesting that Trump should give them some of his sweet billionaire cash, even as Trump was saying, accurately, that most politicians are bought and sold. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:49 p.m. Rand Paul calls Trump out on his past support for single-payer care, saying that the Republican Party has been against single-payer for decades. Trump doesn't hesitate: "I don’t think you heard me. You’re having a hard time tonight.” —David Graham

9:48 p.m. Rand Paul and Chris Christie's earlier clash on the collection of phone records highlights a major and growing rift among today's conservatives: national security vs. civil liberty. Talk about “keeping America safe” and “halting unnecessary surveillance” both receive a lot of support and applause, but the political reality is that—at least when it comes to modern technology, including phone records—the two inevitably come into conflict. —Tyler Bishop

9:47 p.m. Donald Trump is bragging that he came out strongly against the war in Iraq in July 2004. One problem: That was more than a year into the war. —David Graham

9:45 p.m. Ted Cruz, in response to a question from Megan Kelly on ISIS, said he supported a bill in Congress that would strip Americans who fight ISIS overseas of their U.S. citizenship. It's been proposed in countries like the U.K., but in the U.S., the bill would likely violate Afroyim v. Rusk, a Supreme Court ruling in 1967 that forbids Congress from involuntarily revoking American citizenship. —Matt Ford

9:44 p.m. Jeb Bush still doesn't have a great answer to questions about his brother George W. Bush's war in Iraq. But he did pivot quickly to criticizing Obama for allowing ISIS to grow. —David Graham

9:43 p.m. Ted Cruz speaks about President Obama's response to terrorists as if Obama hasn't spent eight years ordering countless lethal drone strikes. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:42 p.m. Ted Cruz is praising Egyptian President Sisi, which is a pretty bold move—given that Sisi is an autocratic leader who has consistently pushed back on the religious freedom Cruz treasures so dearly stateside. —David Graham

9:41 p.m. The national conversation on criminal-justice reform is changing, but you can see echoes of the tough-on-crime era in the immigration debate. Chris Wallace asked Ted Cruz if he'd support "Katie Steinle's Law," which he described as a measure to defund sanctuary cities, named after a woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant in San Francisco. Cruz responded by calling for harsher criminal penalties overall. This was a common thread tying together criminal-justice policies before reform was in vogue: constructing broad policies in response to the most serious cases. —Matt Ford

9:40 p.m. Chris Christie said that he would never apologize for protecting the American people. J. Edgar Hoover took the same position. This notion that everything done with the intention of protecting America is necessarily kosher is pernicious nonsense. It is, as Rand Paul suggested, antithetical to the Bill of Rights. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:38 p.m. Well, here we go, folks: The first real hand-to-hand combat of the night is between Chris Christie and Rand Paul, over civil liberties and bulk collection of records. Christie accuses Paul of endangering American lives. Paul replies that Christie misunderstands the Bill of Rights. —David Graham

9:36 p.m. Ted Cruz, whose ancestors immigrated to America and helped to change it, speaks as if we're all descended from Native Americans. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:32 p.m. John Kasich just said something interesting. Chris Wallace tried to get him to speak to Trump's immigration record, and Kasich neither condemned him, as Bush and Rick Perry have done, nor cozied up, as Ted Cruz did. Instead, he tried to split the difference: “We need to take lessons from Donald Trump if we’re really going to learn. Here’s the thing about Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s hitting a nerve in this country. People are fed up. For people who want to just tune him out, they’re making a mistake.” —David Graham

9:29 p.m. With its third question to Donald Trump aimed at his immigration position, Fox News has given him a chance to highlight the one thing most every viewer already knows about him, and the one subject he's discussed to the exclusion of all others. With respect to Trump, this is an atrocious moderating job: every opportunity to test the candidate or to convey new information about him to voters has been squandered. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:27 p.m. What's incredible about Trump is his reality distortion zone: He creates facts, at least in his own mind. He just told Chris Wallace that there was no discussion of illegal immigration until he brought it up. Is that true? Of course not. But he said it with complete confidence. —David Graham

9:26 p.m. Jeb Bush implies that people are dying because of sanctuary cities. In fact, sanctuary cities make the undocumented immigrants inside them more likely to report crimes and act as witnesses when local police officers are trying to catch people who committed crimes other than immigration violations. It is more likely that sanctuary cities make American citizens safer. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:24 p.m. John Kasich purposefully invoking work that he's done to treat the health care needs of people in prison is a striking reminder of how much the politics of incarceration in America is changing. It's hard to imagine anything like it even a couple of presidential election cycles ago. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:22 p.m. Rand Paul is the first Republican to articulate a position that distinguishes himself from a lot of other people on stage, though most viewers probably don't recognize the positions of the other candidates on a matter like arming the Syrian rebels. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:20 p.m. Mike Huckabee's signature move this election cycle, so far, is to invoke novel constitutional theories. He's already said that state governments can sidestep the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage. Tonight, asked about marriage equality, he quickly deflected to abortion and Planned Parenthood, and said he would invoke the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to ban abortion, on the basis that a fetus is a person and constitutionally protected. —David Graham

9:18 p.m. So far, Fox News has given Donald Trump two questions: one about whether he would support the Republican nominee and one taking issue with his comments about women. From Trump's perspective, these are ideal. They allow him to highlight how he is different from the other candidates—not a politician, not politically correct—and fail utterly to challenge his knowledge of the issues or to pin him down on any position. —Conor Friedersdorf

9:16 p.m. Megyn Kelly pressed Donald Trump to defend misogynistic comments he’s made on Twitter. “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” a defiant Trump replied. “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness.” From there, he pivoted to the challenges facing America abroad, from Mexico to China, before returning to take a jab at Kelly for her question.

The crowd loudly cheered his denunciation of political correctness, although many seemed taken aback at his treatment of Kelly. But the exchange highlighted the gap between the popularity Trump enjoys among some elements of the Republican base, and the challenges he would face wooing the broader electorate. —Yoni Appelbaum

9:13 p.m. Anyone who worried that the Fox News moderators would lob softballs at the Republican candidates learned quickly that wasn't true. In quick succession, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly asked three tough questions. First, Kelly asked Carson about his repeated demonstrations about serious knowledge gaps. Second, Rubio was asked to explain his criticism of Jeb Bush's executive experience, given that he has none. Then Wallace asked Jeb to answer the claim that the nation doesn't need any more presidents named Bush. This won't be a cakewalk for the candidates. —David Graham

9:05 p.m. Donald Trump starts this one off with guns blazing: He refuses to pledge his support for the eventual Republican nominee, shrugging diffidently. Shorter Trump: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ —David Graham

8:56 p.m. If you missed the 5 p.m. debate featuring the minor candidates, don't worry—you didn't miss much. In a room of well-credentialed politicians smarting at their exclusion from the top tier, only the lone non-politician managed not to seem like an amateur. Carly Fiorina was polished and incisive, as when she deftly skewered Donald Trump’s Clinton ties while sympathizing with his disgust for the political class; social-media metrics showed a spike in interest in her candidacy. The Fox News moderators, Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum, seemed hostile and bored, essentially accusing all the candidates of being losers for not getting more traction. (“Senator Santorum, you failed to beat Mitt Romney … Has your moment passed?”) Lindsey Graham, normally a jovial spirit, seemed glum. Rick Perry, still smarting from his debate failures four years ago, stumbled around nervously.

There were few surprises on policy—the candidates agreed that the Iran deal is bad, executive orders are out of control, and Planned Parenthood must be stopped. Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore failed to stand out. And in the night’s most stunning failure, when they were asked to use just two words to describe Hillary Clinton—along the lines of Barack Obama’s “likable enough” in 2008—not a single one of the candidates met the prescribed limit, unless you didn’t count “and” as a word. This is a Republican field that does not follow directions—bold mavericks who make their own rules. What were their names again? —Molly Ball

8:30 p.m. Welcome to The Atlantic's live coverage of the first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election. The debate is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. eastern. We'll have live updates, analysis, and information throughout the evening.

The top 10 Republican candidates in the polls, out of a field of 17, take the stage in Cleveland on Thursday night. In some ways, it’s a remarkably diverse group, from the orange-haired business mogul Donald Trump, who’s jumped out to an early lead; to the libertarian scion Senator Rand Paul; to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, son of one president and brother of another.

In other ways, though, the candidates on stage are strikingly similar. They’re all men; the sole woman in the field, Carly Fiorina, was squeezed out of the primetime debate. And on a wide range of issues, they’ve staked out remarkably similar positions. Most agree with the Republican primary electorate that President Obama’s tenure has been, at best, profoundly disappointing. They are likely to compete largely in the vehemence of their denunciations of his decisions.

The debate offers a national television audience its first good look at the field. The candidates who are polling well may spend their time making the case that they are best positioned to challenge the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. Those struggling to separate themselves from the pack may instead punch upward, challenging their better known rivals. With so many candidates, and so little time for each of them to make their cases, count on a parade of canned one-liners and sharp jabs.

Earlier this evening, on the undercard, seven GOP hopefuls squared off in front of a sea of empty seats. Fox’s formula, writes Russell Berman in his recap of that debate, was apparently: “Reject seven Republicans from the main debate, invite them into an empty theater, and ask them why they’re failures.”

Despite having excluded almost half the field on the basis of early national polls of dubious utility, the moderators tonight may still struggle to both include all the politicians on the stage, and give any of them time to say anything meaningful. Setting the cap at ten established what my colleague David Graham called “an arbitrary limit that neither accommodates all of the candidates nor facilitates a satisfying debate.”

You can read up on the whole field in our 2016 Presidential Race Cheat Sheet. We’ve also got detailed profiles of many in the field, from the surprising frontrunner Donald Trump, to Ohio’s Governor John Kasich, who barely squeaked in to tonight’s main event. —Yoni Appelbaum

Seven Republicans Vie to Be Heard in an Empty Room

Reject seven Republicans from the main debate, invite them into an empty theater, and ask them why they’re failures.

That was the novel approach taken by Fox News to its gathering of GOP also-rans, which took place four hours before the first prime-time debate of the 2016 race. It was an awkward, low-energy affair, featuring four current or former Republican governors, a current senator and a former one, and the sole woman in the GOP race, Carly Fiorina.

The candidates had an almost impossible task from the get-go. The Fox moderators, Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum, began by asking each of the seven, essentially, “Why are you even here?” The responses resembled a résumé-reading, as each of the four current or former governors recited their “track records” of state-level success. Next came—who else?—Donald Trump. How is it possible, the moderators implored, that each of you distinguished public servants could be losing so badly to The Donald?

“I don’t know,” Carly Fiorina, the other business executive in the field, replied. “I didn’t get a phone call from Bill Clinton before I entered the race. Did any of you get a phone call from Bill Clinton?”

It was a decent zinger referencing the news that Hillary Clinton’s husband had called Trump and offered him encouragement earlier this spring. But like almost all attempts at humor or applause lines, it got lost in the vacuum of the empty theater. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who has been tangling with Trump for weeks, reminded viewers of the ephemerality of early frontrunners, noting that throughout 2007, Rudy Giuliani was leading Republican polls. Perry would know: He endorsed Giuliani for the nomination that year. Taking on Trump directly, Perry called out the liberal stances he’s taken over the years. “How can you run for the Republican nomination and be for single-payer healthcare?” he asked.

Lindsey Graham did a solid job of turning every question toward his comfort zone of foreign policy, but despite his years of experience with television, he seemed to forget how to smile. His outlook for the country seemed so bleak that, at times, he came off as sad. Rick Santorum and the ex-governors George Pataki and Jim Gilmore, meanwhile, offered all-too-frequent reminders that the pinnacles of their careers now lie a decade or more in the past. Santorum, the runner-up to Mitt Romney in 2012, retained the somewhat populist message he delivered then, while also denouncing the Supreme Court’s “rogue decision” on same-sex marriage and refusing to acknowledge it as the law of the land. “It is not anymore than Dred Scott was settled law to Abraham Lincoln,” Santorum said.

Some pundits have suggested the B-squad debate should be a play-in game, with the “winner” moving on to the main event next time. If that were the case, Fiorina would likely be the consensus choice. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO appeared polished and knowledgeable despite never having held public office, delivering strong statements in opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran and calling on major tech companies to cooperate with the FBI on anti-terrorism cases. Her one stumble came before the debate, when her team apparently left her closing statement on a hotel printer, where it was found and promptly posted on Twitter by Sergio Gor, a spokesman for varsity debater Rand Paul.

It was an awkward, low-energy affair, featuring four current or former Republican governors, a current and former senator, and the sole woman in the GOP race, Carly Fiorina.

If the sheer size of the GOP field was unprecedented, so, too, was the debate format. Fox News couldn’t possibly fit all 17 major hopefuls onto one stage (even 10 is borderline laughable), so it split the first face-to-face contest into two separate events and used their own mysterious mix of national polls to determine who made the cut in prime time. After the final surveys came in, Chris Christie and John Kasich edged out Perry for the last 9 p.m. slot, relegating the former governor of the nation’s second-largest state to lower-tier status.

In the hours beforehand, the debate about the earlier debate centered on what to call it. There was the Kid’s Table Debate—despite the relatively-advanced age of most of the participants. Or you could take your pick of sports metaphors: The Undercard, the J.V. Team, or the Bronze Medal Match. Politico went a little meaner, simply calling it “the losers’ debate.” Never one to miss out on the joke, Graham embraced both the absurdity of the set-up and the obvious potential for a drinking game (or two).

You'll need this guide today at 5PM. #HappyHourDebate pic.twitter.com/ZinKdN9Vcy

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 6, 2015

Fox News showed some deference to the candidates, simply referring to the first event as “the opening debate” and trying its best to pump up its importance. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a one-time GOP rising star, and longest-of-the-long-shots Pataki and Gilmore rounded out the 5 p.m. debate. Neither Pataki, the ex-governor of New York, nor Gilmore, the ex-governor of Virgina, have held office in nearly a decade, and Gilmore only jumped into the race a few weeks ago, his path to the nomination known— apparently—only to him.

Vying simply for airtime and a chance to play next time with the big boys, the candidates showed little interest in actually debating each other on policy. There was almost no interaction among them, and to the extent the candidates in the pre-game show criticized their opponents, the jabs were directed at the Republicans waiting in the wings. They did, of course, eagerly accept the moderators’ invitation to insult Hillary Clinton (“Not trustworthy,” Fiorina said. “Good at email,” quipped Perry), but they mostly couldn't follow the instruction to do so in two words. And when it came time to describe what they would implement as their first executive order if, by some chance, they were elected, almost all of them said they would begin by undoing as much of the Obama presidency as they could in a day.

It’s not clear if Fox or the Republican National Committee will subject these second-tier dreamers to another B-squad debate in the fall. Perhaps the field will begin to thin out by then, or maybe organizers will come up with a way to liven up the format. They could start, at least, by allowing them a live audience.

Democrats Debate the Debates

The Republican Party carefully thought through its debate process for 2016, seeking to ensure a good mix of candidates, avoid too much friendly fire, and prevent a circus-like atmosphere. Instead, it’s getting Donald Trump onstage Thursday night in Cleveland.

Can the Democrats do better? The party announced its own primary-debate calendar on Thursday. Here’s the schedule:

October 13: CNN—Nevada November 14: CBS/KCCI/Des Moines Register—Des Moines, Iowa December 19: ABC/WMUR—Manchester, New Hampshire January 17: NBC/Congressional Black Caucus Institute—Charleston, South Carolina February or March: Univision/Washington Post—Miami February or March: PBS—Wisconsin

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz laid out some more details here.

So far the reaction has been … not great, at least from candidates not named Hillary Clinton. Her rivals want more debates, and they want a more open process for them. Martin O’Malley’s campaign loudly protested the rules, and said it may seek to set up debates outside of the auspices of the party. (The party has threatened to exclude candidates who participate in unsanctioned events.) Senator Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying he was “disappointed, but not surprised,” by the schedule. “At a time when many Americans are demoralized about politics and have given up on the political process, I think it's imperative that we have as many debates as possible—certainly more than six.”

Sanders and O’Malley have a point. This year’s slate is unusually skimpy and starts unusually late. There were 19 Democratic debates during the 2008 cycle, according to Larry Sabato’s team at the University of Virginia, plus other unofficial forums. There were 16 in 2004. In both cases, the summits started much earlier, too—the first Democratic debate of the 2008 cycle came way back in April 2007, and the first of 2004 was in May 2003. A shorter, later debate season is widely thought to benefit Clinton. Because she’s the frontrunner, fewer debates means fewer chances for missteps or for other candidates to chip into her lead among Democratic voters. (A counterintuitive minority argument runs that Clinton benefits from more debates, because it helps her prepare for the rough-and-tumble general election.)

On the other hand, Sanders is right that he can’t be too surprised by the schedule. After all, the Democratic Party announced in May that it would host six debates, so the outrage at the specifics rings a bit hollow and comes a bit late. The horse is out of the barn by now—and the horserace is in full swing.

A Political Youth Camp and the Legacy of Terror In Norway

Norway’s Labor Party will return Friday to the island of Utoya for its first youth camp at the site since 2011, when a gunman professing far-right-wing ideology attacked the youth camp and killed 69 people.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s center, killing eight people, then traveled to the nearby island and began his rampage. He said he chose the target—and his victims—because he blamed the then-ruling Labor Party for promoting multiculturalism in Norway.

The Labor Party’s youth camp was canceled in 2012 and was held in other location in the subsequent years.

"Those who are preparing to return to Utoya are helping to write a new page in the history of the island," Mani Hussaini, a 27-year-old from Syrian Kurdistan who was elected the head of the party’s youth wing last year, told Agence France-Presse ahead of the three-day camp that begins Friday.

Among the more than 1,000 students who have enrolled for the camp is Astrid Willa Eide Hoem, 20, who survived the 2011 massacre.

"Utoya has to continue to be a workshop where young people learn about democracy, politics and activism," she told AFP.

But not everyone who survived is ready to return.

"I'm not sure I want to return to the camp, so I prefer to wait until I really want to go," Marie Hogden, who also survived the violence, told the news agency.

Here’s more from AFP:

The leafy, green island has in the meantime received a facelift. Thanks to donations and the work of hundreds of volunteers, new buildings have been built, while the old ones have been renovated with respect to the dead.

The cafeteria, where 13 youngsters lost their lives, was initially to be torn down but has been maintained, with its bullet holes intact. But another wooden building is being built and will partially encompass the cafeteria as a memorial centre. …

A little further away, a memorial entitled "The Clearing" has been mounted in the woods: a giant steel ring suspended from the evergreens, bearing the names of 60 of the 69 victims.

In a sign that the wounds are far from healed, nine families did not want their loved ones' names to appear on the ring.

It is estimated that Breivik’s rampage, the worst in the history of the Scandinavian country of 4 million people, affected 1 in 4 Norwegians.

Breivik is now serving a 21-year prison term for his actions, the maximum allowed under Norwegian law. That sentence can be extended indefinitely. He recently gained admission into Oslo University to study political science. He will not be admitted to campus or have direct contact with professors, and his work will go via prison staff.

Reporter Max Fisher wrote in The Atlantic in 2012 about the differences between the U.S. and Norwegian prison systems. He said:

The much-studied Norwegian system is built on something called restorative justice. Proponents of this system might argue that it emphasizes healing: for the victims, for the society, and, yes, for the criminal him or herself. …

The pleasant-sounding experience of being in Norwegian prison isn't some sign of Scandinavian weakness or naïveté; it's precisely the point. A comfortable cell, clean and relaxing environment, and nice daily activities such as cooking classes are all meant to prepare the criminal for potentially difficult or painful internal reformation. Incarceration, in this thinking, is the treatment for whatever social or psychological disease led them to transgress. The criminals are not primarily wrongdoers to be punished, but broken people to be fixed.

Fisher added: “Despite the lighter sentences, restorative justice systems seem to reduce crime, reduce the cost of imprisoning criminals, and reduce recidivism. … But, even if we accept all of the data suggesting that society as a whole is better off under a Norwegian-style restorative model, those numbers don't account for the more abstract, difficult-to-define sense of justice as its own inherent good.”

Will There Ever Be a Truly Great Fantastic Four Film?

The best way to understand the difficulty of adapting Fantastic Four for the screen is not through its protagonists, but its chief villain. Doctor Doom (real name: Victor Von Doom) is a genius scientist, an evil sorcerer, and the dictator of a small fictional country in Eastern Europe. He wears a metal suit of armor and an ostentatious green cloak and hood at all times. In his first comic-book appearance (Fantastic Four #5 in 1962), he captures the heroes and forces them to travel back in time to steal the pirate Blackbeard’s treasure chest, hoping to claim the wizard Merlin’s lost jewels to power his nefarious magic. He is, even for the era, a delightfully ludicrous creation.

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That kitschy tone is part of what makes comic books so special. The medium offers vast dramatic territory for writers and artists to navigate, from the dizzyingly absurd to the most recognizably human. As my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates has put it, Doom comes from a genre once dismissed as trash, but at the same time seized on by younger generations who understood the story of a tortured outsider. On the page, it’s easy to relate to Doom as a man while simultaneously enjoying his latest ridiculous battle against a godlike alien or dark demon. On the screen, it’s a far tougher balance to strike, which is why Fantastic Four—simultaneously grounded and preposterous—has proven one of the toughest comic-book properties of all to translate.

Josh Trank’s new film, in theaters Friday, is the third big-screen attempt to make Fantastic Four work, and it’s as tragically flawed as the previous two efforts, although for entirely different reasons. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, Fantastic Four was the first Marvel superhero comic, ushering in an era of protectors of justice who could also be imperfect human beings. The team obeys a family dynamic, with Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) as the stern father, Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) as the warm mother, Johnny Storm (Human Torch) as their smart-aleck kid, and Ben Grimm (The Thing) as his grumpy older brother. Lee and Kirby’s characters bicker and brawl, especially in the early days of the comic, but always stand united in the face of greater threats, like the imperious Doom.

The first Fantastic Four, filmed in 1994 but never released, is the stuff of bizarre Hollywood trivia. Made for only $1 million and produced by low-budget legend Roger Corman, the movie was seemingly created only so its production company could retain the rights to the property for future large-scale adaptations. These days, you can watch the whole thing on YouTube and marvel at its adorable ineptness. If nothing else, the film nails the kitsch factor, but it also makes some marvelously basic errors, like staging a point-of-view shot from the perspective of a character who is blind.  

Hollywood’s first real crack at the comic came in 2005 with Tim Story’s Fantastic Four, starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis as the super-team and Julian McMahon as Doctor Doom. Its budget was a hundred times bigger than its predecessor, and the script was largely faithful to Lee and Kirby’s origin story for the heroes, who get their strange powers after being exposed to “cosmic rays” during a spaceship flight. But the whole affair was depressingly tame, following the prescribed beats of a superhero movie—strange powers discovered, internal strife resolved, evil villain conquered through teamwork—without anything to distinguish itself. Coming in the early days of the superhero-movie boom, Fantastic Four lacked the visual punch of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, the allegorical weight of Bryan Singer’s X-Men, or the real-world grit of Christopher Nolan’s Batman. A sequel got marginally better reviews but took in less at the box office, and Fox shelved the franchise until Trank’s 2015 reboot.

Plagued by stories of production woes and studio-imposed re-shoots, Trank’s film hobbles onscreen this week to critical jeers, even though it at least tries a different approach. The onscreen mess has elements of Nolan’s grittiness (it’s mostly set in a dimly lit underground lab), Raimi’s pulpiness (Doom is re-imagined as an alien creature who can telepathically explode people’s heads), and even a touch of David Cronenberg-style body horror as the heroes discover their strange powers. It’s a catastrophe, but one clearly brought about by an effort to take a story rooted in both silliness and realism and somehow keep hold of both of those threads.

Fantastic Four ushered in an era of protectors of justice who could also be imperfect human beings.

And yet others have managed this kind of balance. Ten years ago, who could’ve imagined that Marvel Studios (which had no involvement in Fantastic Four) could pull off a cinematic world where the Norse god Thor and World War II propaganda hero Captain America realistically co-exist in the present day? Marvel proved there’s a way to make a ’60s comic-book adaptation work for a 21st-century audience: by including a hefty dash of self-aware humor and imposing a recognizably colorful visual style across all its films. Trank tries to lean in the opposite direction, grounding the Fantastic Four origin story in sci-fi gobbledygook (the heroes get their powers by traveling to another dimension via quantum mechanics) and wrestling with the real-world implications of how the U.S. military might take advantage of the newly superpowered.

The problem is, Trank’s still making a Fantastic Four movie. There’s still a Doctor Doom clad in a green cloak and boasting of world domination. The Human Torch still activates his power by saying “Flame on,” and the rock-monster Thing barrels into villains while shouting “It’s clobberin’ time!” It’s unavoidably camp—and the more Trank tries to avoid that fact, the more risible the whole experiment seems.

Even as a comic-book property, Fantastic Four has lost its moneymaking luster, dropping from the list of Marvel’s top-selling titles decades ago and recently being canceled altogether (although some have theorized that is the company’s way of trying to undercut the film adaptation, since it doesn’t own the rights). Stan Lee’s later creations, like Spider-Man and the X-Men, were even more relatably flawed, and the family antics of the Fantastic Four have struggled to evolve seamlessly with the times as comics grew more grim. And so the best way to bring it to the big screen might be to embrace its glory years and create an evocative period piece, a Mad Men-style take on ’60s comic storytelling with bright visuals to match (Brad Bird’s animated film The Incredibles, which draws loose inspiration from Fantastic Four, succeeds along those lines).

But that approach would rob Fox of what it most desires: the same multi-film, multi-character franchise Marvel Studios has created and Warner Brothers is trying to replicate with its stable of DC Comics heroes. Fox also owns the rights to X-Men, and is reportedly planning a crossover between the two properties if Trank’s film is a hit. For that to work, some real-world consistency is required, meaning audiences shouldn’t expect something unique or daring. And with the comic-book movie genre becoming the standard Hollywood blockbuster, the chance of seeing the kind of revolution Lee and Kirby ignited in 1961 grows dimmer and dimmer.

Why California's Wildfires Won't Be Getting Better Anytime Soon

On Friday, California’s wildfire season turned deadly, when Forest Service firefighter David Ruhl, 38, became the first wildland firefighter to be killed this year. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 homes are under evacuation orders as nearly 10,000 of Ruhl’s peers tackle two dozen wildfires that have scorched tens of thousands of acres across the state. As of Wednesday morning, the state’s biggest fire, the Rocky Fire north of Santa Rosa, had been burning for a week and was only 20 percent contained.

2015 has been an above-average year for wildfires in California, as the state continues to bake in an unprecedented drought. Last week Governor Jerry Brown described his state as a “tinderbox” and declared a state of emergency. Back in the spring, conditions for wildfires were already so bad that fire ecologists were predicting a “disaster” fire season.

Summer has proved them right—to an extent. Since the beginning of the year, the number of acres burned has topped 100,000, more than twice the average of the past five years and more than burned in all of 2014. So the wildfire situation is indeed dire. But federal records show that it actually isn’t too far above the longer-term average. In other words, thanks in part to global warming, nasty fire seasons are just par for the course in California these days.

The moisture content of dead “fuel” (trees, shrubs, grasses) has been below average for most of the year across nearly the whole state, according to federal data, in a few cases dropping to the lower levels than at any time in the three decades since record-keeping began. Jeremy Sullens, a predictive wildfire analyst at the National Interagency Fire Center (a federal agency that coordinates firefighting efforts), said that there is also more fuel than normal on the ground this year. The long-term drought has caused more trees than normal to die, while at the same time a smattering of spring rain grew a fat crop of grass, he said. Those two factors combined are a perfect recipe for wildfires. “Absolutely the drought is the biggest factor,” said Daniel Berlant, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, the state’s wildland-firefighting agency. “Our vegetation hasn’t received enough water to resist wildfires. All it takes is one little spark.” (For an explanation of how climate change worsens wildfire conditions, check out the video at the bottom of this post.)

So far this year, as the following NIFC charts show, the cumulative total of fires has been just above average. Meanwhile, the total acreage of fires has been about normal. Here’s northern California:

Northern California Cumulative Number of Fires NIFC Northern California Cumulative Acres Burned NIFC

And here’s southern California:

Southern California Cumulative Number of Fires NIFC Southern California Cumulative Acres Burned NIFC

Now compare that to what’s happening in Alaska, which is truly terrifying. This could be the state’s worst fire season on record. Fires there are literally off the charts:

Alaska Cumulative Number of Fires NIFC Alaska Cumulative Acres Burned NIFC

Back in California, the situation seems likely to improve into the fall. Sullens explained that it’s much easier to bring fire conditions back to normal—which, he stressed, does not mean no fires at all—than it is to relieve the state’s overall drought conditions. That’s because the amount of water needed to dampen potentially hazardous fuel is much less than what is needed to restock an aquifer or supply a farm. And fire managers are less concerned with season-long trends, and more focused on what the status of fuels is today and tomorrow.

“A small rain could have a huge impact on the fuel condition, even if it doesn't have a big impact the drought condition,” Sullens said. “On a landscape level, all we're really looking as is, ‘Is it enough to dampen the live fuels, at least for a little while?’”

That explains some differences between what scientists are projecting for the drought itself, versus for fire conditions, for the next few months.

NOAA recently estimated that it would take two feet or more of rain over the next six months to lift the drought. While the strong El Niño currently gathering steam in the Pacific Ocean might send some extra rain California’s way, it’s unlikely to be that much. Here’s the most recent drought outlook from NOAA, which shows drought conditions in California persisting or getting worse through the fall:

U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook NOAA

Meanwhile, the wildfire outlook shows signs of improvement across the country. Here’s a GIF that shows the conditions from August through the fall. Bear in mind that under “normal” conditions, there will still be plenty of fires.

NIFC

“At its most basic level, wildland firefighting involves denying the fire a continuous source of heat, fuel, or oxygen,” he said. “Water can be a huge help with that task, but it can certainly be done without any water at all. And it often is.” For the fires that do happen, will firefighters have enough water to put them out? Berlant said that although the lakes and streams that wildland firefighters source water from have been lower than normal, the agency hasn’t yet run into any situation where they had less water than they needed to do their job. Ken Frederick, a NIFC spokesperson, said that firefighters are accustomed to foregoing the luxury of a steady water supply.

This article appears courtesy of Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

How a President Rubio Would Undo the Iran Deal

In the course of a long telephone conversation last week, I learned a couple of important things from Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican running for president (one of the Florida Republicans running for president, I should say). Rubio, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is, with Lindsey Graham, the most fluent of the 3,000 or so candidates for the Republican nomination on matters concerning international affairs and national-security policy, and our conversation gave me a good sense of how the Iran issue would be managed with a Republican—or at least the particular Republican I had on the phone—in the White House.

The full transcript of our discussion can be found below, but I would highlight a number of points. The first is that Rubio made it clear he believes that Barack Obama will have his way on Iran: that Congress will not be able to muster a sufficient number of votes to override the president’s veto of an initial, Republican-led rejection of the Iran nuclear deal—a deal Rubio describes caustically as a “piece of paper that is blocking the pathways” to an Iranian bomb.

“I think the majority of members of Congress are going to vote against it,” he told me. “I’m not sure we’re going to have 67 senators, which would have to include a significant number of Democrats, to reach a veto-proof majority.”

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Rubio argued that an Obama victory now would not necessarily translate into what the White House, or the Iranians, would see as a permanent win. He was blunt about what he would do should he reach the White House: undo, in whatever way possible, the deal. He believes it is inevitable that Iran will be caught cheating on its obligations, and when it does, he would be ready to mete out punishment—including to companies that will presumably be rushing into the Iranian market once the deal is finalized.

“There are companies and banks around the world that might be considering making significant investments in Iran, and what they need to know is that if they make a significant investment in Iran and a future administration reimposes sanctions, or Iran violates the deal, or Iran conducts some outrageous act of terrorism around the world and [is] sanctioned for it, your investment could be lost,” Rubio told me. “If you go into Iran and build a pharmaceutical plant, and you invest all this money to build it, and then suddenly Iran does something, and now you’re subject to sanctions if you continue to do business with them, you’re going to lose that investment. And so I do think that it’s important for investors and others around the world who are looking to do more business with Iran to be very conscious about this, because they’re basically gambling that this regime is not violating the deal or doing something new that could impose sanctions.”

Rubio is worried, however, that the world is ready to let Iranian cheating slide by: “Unless you absolutely catch them in a Cuban missile crisis-style situation, with pictures, red-handed, the world’s not going to force it, because there’ll be too many vested interests economically in Europe and around the world arguing against it.” The job of the next president, he said, would be to ensure that the United States, at least, doesn’t allow Iran to reach the point at which it is “immune” to punishment, or even attack by the United States.

Here is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let me just go right to what is probably the most biting point you’ve made to Secretary of State Kerry: this idea that the Iran agreement might put the U.S. in the position of having to help Iran defend its nuclear facilities from cyberattack or other attacks from Israel. It seems like an outlandish notion.

Senator Marco Rubio: Well, I was just reading out of the text of the agreement, and I assure you that the Iranians interpret it the way that I alluded to, which is that if they come under cyberattack or any other effort to sabotage their program, then not just the U.S., but all the world powers, will have the obligation to assist them technically in defeating those measures. Now obviously Kerry and the administration would say that their reading of this is that we’re trying to protect them from some sort of terrorist group, for example.

I didn’t pose the question in an accusatory way, but I know that it is a part of the deal that Israeli government officials are very concerned about, and I know that the Iranian argument would be that “the U.S. and the other powers are committed now to helping us defeat any efforts to undermine” what the Iranians call their peaceful nuclear-enrichment program. The only country in the world, outside of the countries that signed this deal, that could potentially have the capability to try to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program would be the Israelis. So the point I was trying to get him to answer is this: Does this deal obligate us to help [the Iranians] defeat measures to sabotage their program? And obviously Kerry didn’t answer directly, he just said, “Well, the intention of that is to prevent a terrorist group from getting ahold of this material.”

Goldberg: I’m not imagining a situation where any U.S. administration would even try to get away with helping Iran against Israel in that regard.

Rubio: I think the bigger concern is that Iran would say, “We’re under cyberattack. We are demanding that you help us to defeat it or to stop it.” We would then say, “No, we’re not helping you, that’s not how we read the agreement,” and Iran would then say, “Well, then you have violated the deal, and therefore we can get out.” Now is that something they’d do in six months? No. Is that something they might do in six years, as a loophole they would try to exploit? I could see that in the future. They’re going to interpret every piece of this deal in the most flexible way possible for their long-term interest, and they’re going to try to exploit any loophole to their advantage. The Iranians went into this deal with a very clear mandate, given to them by the supreme leader: Get these sanctions lifted without agreeing to anything that is irreversible. Do not agree to anything that is irreversible. I think they achieved this.

Goldberg: Would a President Rubio ever have entered into a nuclear negotiation with Iran?

Rubio: I’m not against any negotiation. Let’s step back, though. These negotiations started after the world had, on numerous occasions, ruled that Iran did not have a right to enrich or reprocess [nuclear material], and that Iran had no legitimate need for an enrichment program given their energy surplus. The world also took the position that because of Iran’s investment in long-range ICBMs, which are only developed for the purpose of placing on them a nuclear warhead, that Iran already had secret elements to those programs. [The Iranians] maintained at least two different sites that had been hidden from the world, and it took years for perhaps the two leading intelligence agencies in the world—the U.S. and the Israelis—to discover [the sites]. So, once the administration said, “OK, we are willing to negotiate with you on the basis that there is an acknowledged right to enrich or reprocess,” that is the moment the negotiations went off-track. I thought that we could have pressed on with additional sanctions that, over time, would have forced these negotiations to a better starting point. But once you cave on that and say, “You’re now going to be allowed to enrich and reprocess and retain your nuclear infrastructure and, in fact, upgrade it to more modern methods,” I thought that was when the negotiations when off-track.

Goldberg: So this started with a cave, from your perspective?

Rubio: If Iran really wanted peaceful nuclear energy, they could have achieved it the way dozens of countries around the world do, and that is they could have imported the enriched material or the reprocessed plutonium and worked from there. The fact that they want to retain their own domestic enrichment capability, coupled with the secrecy around their program, coupled with their sponsorship of terrorism, coupled with their heavy and continuing investments in a long-range warhead-delivery system—all of that is the reason why Iran is different from South Korea, or Japan, or any other country in the world that wants a peaceful nuclear program.

“Once Iran is able to raise the price of a military strike against them to an unacceptable level, they’re immune.”

Goldberg: Is there one feature of this deal that bothers you more than any other?

Rubio: I don’t know where to begin, other than to say that I think it is troublesome that Iran will retain a full-scale industrial-enrichment capability using the most modern technology available, albeit—according to the deal—under limited numbers for a time. The Obama administration keeps saying, “They can’t unlearn what they know.” But the truth is, the knowledge on how to enrich, the knowledge on how to build a weapon, this isn’t easy, but it’s easier than building the infrastructure for doing it. You might know technically how to enrich or reprocess, but you need the infrastructure to do it. You need the equipment, you need the centrifuges, you need the facilities. And the fact that [the Iranians] will be able to retain that full scope of abilities that could easily be ramped up in the future to do more is to me deeply troublesome, because they now have a legal right to maintain this infrastructure forever.

Goldberg: Do you disagree with the Obama administration’s assessment that they’ve blocked Iran’s core pathways to a bomb?

Rubio: I disagree, because I think what they have is a piece of paper that is blocking the pathways, and it is a piece of paper that Iran doesn’t feel necessarily binds them in the long-term. Once Iran has rebuilt or added to its conventional capabilities—meaning the ability to inflict conventional damage on U.S. forces in the region—and once companies based in Europe and around the world become heavily invested in the Iranian economy, the ability to go after Iran’s program is significantly diminished, because the price for doing so becomes exponentially high. You know, the price of positioning assets in the region exposes a U.S. aircraft carrier to being blown up. The price of attacking Iran would mean that tens of thousands of precision rockets would be launched against Israel by Hezbollah, not to mention terrorists around the world conducting asymmetrical attacks. Once Iran is able to raise the price of a military strike against them to an unacceptable level, they’re immune. At this point, they can move forward and concoct any excuse they want for needing a weapon.

Goldberg: Let me ask you about the international politics here. If this deal were to go down as you want it to go down in Congress, wouldn’t the Iranians say, “We can’t trust America, they’re out to get us, so we’re going to rush to the nuclear threshold”?

Rubio: I don’t disagree that the administration has put us in that position. You saw some of my colleagues say that we’ve gone from Iran being the pariah to the U.S. potentially being the pariah—

Goldberg: Right, or Israel, actually. John Kerry referred to this the other day, the pariah idea—

Rubio: Right, I don’t deny that they’ve put us in that position by what they’ve done.

Goldberg: OK, but we’re here.

Rubio: We are. But I think a new administration would have the opportunity to say to Iran, “Look, I understand the previous administration pursued this deal, but let me explain to you our system of government. They pursued it not as a treaty; they pursued it as a political agreement that called on the president of the United States to use a national-security waiver to lift U.S. sanctions. I don’t agree with that decision. I’m going to reimpose U.S. sanctions. In fact, I’m going to go back to Congress and ask them to increase them.”

And I would suspect that between now and the time that this decision happens, we will potentially have multiple opportunities to prove that Iran is already in violation of this deal.

Goldberg: It seems to me that you’re assuming that this deal is something of a fait accompli and that you’re thinking about the next phase—countering Iran. Do you think that this deal is probably going to go through?

Rubio: Well, I think the majority of members of Congress are going to vote against it. I’m not sure we’re going to have 67 senators, which would have to include a significant number of Democrats, to reach a veto-proof majority, but I do think it’s important at this stage to outline what could happen in the future. There are companies and banks around the world that might be considering making significant investments in Iran, and what they need to know is that if they make a significant investment in Iran and a future administration reimposes sanctions, or Iran violates the deal, or Iran conducts some outrageous act of terrorism around the world and [is] sanctioned for it, your investment could be lost. If you go into Iran and build a pharmaceutical plant, and you invest all this money to build it, and then suddenly Iran does something, and now you’re subject to sanctions if you continue to do business with them, you’re going to lose that investment. And so I do think that it’s important for investors and others around the world who are looking to do more business with Iran to be very conscious about this, because they’re basically gambling that this regime is not violating the deal or doing something new that could impose sanctions.

“The Iranians went into this deal with a very clear mandate … [to] not agree to anything that is irreversible. I think they achieved this.”

Goldberg: The Obama administration says it will enforce the deal. You don’t believe that?

Rubio: Well, the likeliest way it’s going to happen is there will be some facility somewhere in Iran that we have suspicions about, and the IAEA will go to Iran and say, “We want to see this facility.” And Iran will say, “This is outrageous. We’re not showing you anything.” And they’ll go through a 24-day process back and forth, and ultimately it won’t be a massive thing, it’ll be an incremental thing, and Iran will say to the world, “Are you going to blow up this entire arrangement and allow us to go off and do whatever we want over this small technical issue?” And there will be a series of small, incremental violations like that, that ultimately over time will wear down the enforcement mechanism. And unless you absolutely catch them in a Cuban missile crisis-style situation, with pictures, red-handed, the world’s not going to force it, because there’ll be too many vested interests economically in Europe and around the world arguing against it. So I don’t expect it’ll be a massive breakout. It’ll be an incremental erosion of the enforcement mechanism, to the point where it’ll be fruitless.

Goldberg: They’re too smart for a massive breakout—

Rubio: —Well, I just think in their mind, they figure, “We can game this thing for a while. We still haven’t developed a long-range rocket anyway. You know, we didn’t necessarily intend to have a bomb in the next 48 months anyway. So, let’s go ahead and incrementally wear on this thing while we aim for modern-day centrifuge capabilities, while we rebuild our economy, while we rebuild our conventional capability.”

Goldberg: In the reality that the P5 + 1 [group of world powers] has created for the world, wouldn’t it still be better at this point to have the deal than to have America walk away from the deal and have Iran free to do what it wants to do come September?

Rubio: Well, I would argue that it is not, because you’re about to see billions of dollars of assets held abroad returned. That money can’t be pulled back. Once [the Iranians] get it they’ll be able to do what they want with it. I mean, it isn’t going to be used to build hospitals and roads. I imagine they’ll spend some on domestic considerations, but if history is a guide, they’ll use the money to increase their reach in the region, and that means supporting [Syrian President] Assad, Hezbollah, the 14th of February movement in Bahrain, the Houthis in Yemen, you name it. There are Shia militias in Iraq they will support, and this is not to mention their long-range missile capabilities and their other asymmetrical conventional capabilities that they’ll work on. The view in the region is that Iran is a country bent on regional domination. They believe the ayatollah’s call to be a leader of all the Muslim world, not just Shia Muslims, and they have a view that Iran has a rightful place in the world as a dominant power. And so Sunni Arabs see all this as a direct threat, and they view Iran as being empowered now. They are now the power in the region that has been given global-power status.

Goldberg: Do you think that the Israelis in retrospect should have gone forward in 2010, 2012 with a preventative strike [against Iranian nuclear facilities]?

Rubio: What held the Israelis back for years has been the promise that we would never allow Iran to cross the line of immunity with the program—that the U.S. had a military capability capable of reaching the current program and setting it back by a couple years. Therefore Israel did not have to take action because we had a weapons system that went further than theirs, and therefore it extended the line of immunity further than what they thought it was. I think with this new dynamic, that changes the Israeli calculus as well.

None of these issues is easy, because obviously I think Israel has a right to act in its self-defense, which it did in the past when it struck facilities in Syria and in other places. It’s not clear exactly what would have happened as a result of that attack. I think that such an attack would have been successful. You would have seen an immediate response from the region. If the attack had not been successful, many of these other nations, including Sunni nations, would have had to condemn it, because the street would have demanded it, and it’s not clear what they could have achieved militarily.

Goldberg: Do you believe that there is a non-Israeli military solution to this problem? I mean, the United States obviously has great capability, but do you think that would, in the worst-case scenario, provide a solution to the problem?

Rubio: Well, it’s the last option, but it most certainly is one that needs to be on the table and that needs to be credible. People need to actually believe that it could happen, and part of it is capability and part of it is willingness. I’m not sure there was ever a time when the Iranians feared that Barack Obama would take military action against their facilities. You know, the administration will argue that the Iranians will come back [from a military attack] and rebuild their program in a way that’s even more fortified, but I can tell you that, for example, in 2003 the Iranians responded to the Iraq invasion by stopping their program, because they feared that they would be next. And so we have seen in the past that they have responded to what they believed was a credible threat. We can acknowledge that their pain threshold is pretty high. I mean, the Iraq-Iran War only ended when the number of casualties became so high that it undermined the Iranian regime’s grip on power. And so I’m not arguing that their pain threshold is not quite high. But I think having a credible threat, one they believe the U.S. would actually use, is something they would respond to. But I don’t think they believe this president was ever willing.

“A new administration would have the opportunity to say to Iran ... ‘I’m going to reimpose U.S. sanctions. In fact, I’m going to go back to Congress and ask them to increase them.’”

Goldberg: John Kerry has said that Israel would be blamed, and [it would] lead to further isolation for Israel, if this deal doesn’t go through Congress. Some Israelis read that like a threat, but you could also read that as a correct analysis of the situation.

Rubio: I read that as an administration that’s insensitive to the reality that Israel finds itself in, because even if you believe that to be true, there are consequences for the secretary of state saying that. If you honestly believe that, then you could share that with them in private channels directly and forcefully. But to acknowledge that publicly is a threat to Israel’s security, because it only further emboldens Israel’s enemies to believe that there’s some sort of daylight between the U.S. and Israel—that they can probably get away with more aggressive action against Israel.

Goldberg: I think it’s clear that President Obama considers ISIS a main threat to United States national-security interests in the Middle East. Do you agree—no matter what you think of Iran—do you agree that ISIS poses a more serious challenge to the United States and its allies in the Middle East?

Rubio: We live in a new world where you can’t really make a choice like that. I mean, they both pose a very serious threat, but they’re very different. Iran poses a more traditional geopolitical threat—a nation-state seeking to become the dominant power in the region in a way that undermines our allies and our capabilities in that region, and undermines stability. ISIS poses an ideological threat backed up by the ability to not just conduct terrorist activity, but to take over territory and to hold territory through military means, and the desire to spread that ideology to take action against the West here in the homeland, across Europe, and across the world. They both pose very serious threats. They’re both different, but they’re both real. And you add the threat that [Russian President] Putin poses to stability in Europe and the increasing threat that China poses to stability in the Asia-Pacific region, and you start to realize how complex the 21st century geopolitical order has become.

Goldberg: Do you agree with the assessment you hear in some circles that the Obama administration wants to withdraw from the Strait of Hormuz, from the Gulf, from the South China Sea? Do you find evidence that they’re interested in turning over regional security issues to other powers?

Rubio: Not everywhere. I think they’re rhetorically committed to stability in the Asia-Pacific region. I think [the] TTP [trade deal] was an important part of our commitment to that. Some of the reinvigoration of NATO that is now going on, particularly in the Baltic states, has been a positive development. I do think this president was elected on the fundamental promise that he was going to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan to do a deal with Iran. And I think the Middle East in particular is a place where this administration wants to be less engaged, and the results are evident, that this withdrawal from the region has led to a chaotic matrix that has led to growing instability in that part of the world and to implications elsewhere. The problem with the “Asia pivot” is that even if we’re rhetorically pivoting, and in some respects if you can pass TPP you can even pivot economically, you may not have the resources to pivot militarily to the region. You still need the assets. You still need the naval assets in order to back up our security agreements and security assurances that we’ve made to our allies at a time when the Chinese are increasing their asymmetrical capabilities.

Goldberg: How many aircraft carriers do you think we should have?

Rubio: Well, I don’t know if there’s a magic number. I think 12, at least. I mean, the problem that we have in Asia today is that three months out of the year we have no aircraft carriers. January, February, and part of March we’re in port for service, and there isn’t a backup carrier in the region. We used to count on one that rotated out of the Mediterranean that provided coverage during that time, but the bigger problem isn’t just the number of aircraft carriers; the bigger problem is the ability to position them, because China has developed and continues to develop shore-based rockets that are capable of knocking out an aircraft carrier: a $4-million rocket that can destroy a $4-billion ship. It pushes us even further out of range. So you can have 20 aircraft carriers—if China can blow them up, you can’t bring them in there anyway. You got to push them further out, and so it impacts your ability to project power in the region. The positive development has been the Japanese are moving quickly towards the ability to provide for collective self-defense, and that’s a force multiplier—a very capable military force—that I think could add to our presence in the region. The South Koreans have their own capabilities. But the Philippines basically [has] no military capability. They’re doing some nominal improvements right now, but they’ve got a long ways to go to even be able to protect their own territory, much less participate in projecting into the region.

“[Obama’s anti-ISIS campaign] is a cosmetic show of force that ultimately shows you’re not truly committed to defeating these people.”

Goldberg: Do you think that President Obama, his foreign policy and his view of America’s place in the world—are these aberrational, more a product of delayed trauma from Iraq and 9/11, or do you think he’s moving where the country itself is moving, in terms of its role in the world and in terms of America’s self-conception and the waning of the ideas animating American exceptionalism? I mean, the things you’re talking about don’t resonate very much—especially when talking about the Middle East—with an American public that seems tired of all of these Middle East conflicts in particular.

Rubio: Well, go back to 2007, 2008, 2009. There was significant fatigue in this country about both Afghanistan and Iraq, and that was understandable. You had a tremendous loss of life, and people who had been injured and maimed in attacks there on behalf of the liberty and security of people who oftentimes didn’t seem like they wanted us there. And you married that sort of sentiment that was around, I think, up until ISIS began beheading people—you married that sentiment to a belief system the president has, which holds that a lot of our problems in the region were caused by us being too engaged, because we were telling people what to do—

Goldberg: For supporting the wrong allies? For supporting the wrong people?

Rubio: Right, and if we would just mind our own business, this theory goes—and in particular force the Israelis to work out a deal with the Palestinians—that somehow the region would become more stable. And so you married that belief to fatigue, and that leads to this foreign policy we now see. What happened since is you’ve seen the fatigue go away as ISIS began beheading people, and you’ve seen the implications of this retreat from the region, which is that it leaves behind a vacuum, a vacuum that has led to chaos. It’s led to chaos in Iraq, it’s increasingly leading to chaos in Afghanistan. ISIS is now fighting with the Taliban to become the premier Islamist group on the ground. You’ve seen the chaos in Libya. You’ve seen the chaos spreading to other parts of North Africa as well. And so you’re seeing the results of that play itself out in chaos, but ultimately they’re forcing this president back into the region.

This is the guy who was going to get us out of these conflicts, but now he has been pulled back in, and he’s trying to do it in the most limited way possible. But this is ending up making it worse, not better, because what’s happening now in Iraq is people are looking at these limited air strikes and saying, “This is not American power. We know what American power really looks like, and this isn’t it.” This is a cosmetic show of force that ultimately shows you’re not truly committed to defeating these people, and this has undermined our credibility with Jordan, with the Saudis, with the Egyptians, with others.