Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. July 25, 2024 |
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The pro-Harris internet is ablaze. As you may have noticed, Vice President Kamala Harris' most ardent supporters are going heavy on the memes. Some are jazzed about the memetic support offered by musical artist Charli XCX. There's been a lot of inside joking about coconut trees. All that may be confusing to those on the outside, but the left-leaning New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argues it signifies a powerful rediscovery of joy in politics.
Beyond the giddiness of this new pro-Harris internet culture, California-based lawyer and journalist Nicole Allan, who profiled Harris for The California Sunday Magazine in 2019, assesses the VP's potential national campaign appeal in a short, explanatory New York Times podcast. Harris' 2019 presidential primary campaign sputtered badly, Allan notes; that endeavor also saw Harris, the former California attorney general, pivot to the progressive left on issues of law and justice. That proved ineffective, but Allan says Harris' California career offers hints that she might fare well in the coming months.
"Harris was a very popular politician in California, from when she began as district attorney in San Francisco up through her time as attorney general," Allan says. "She was extremely charismatic in front of a jury. She was direct and forceful, but also had a natural and relaxed demeanor that really got people on her side, juries and judges and co-workers, but also when she started running for office, donors and voters. … Many national voters are not aware of the Kamala Harris that Californians have known for a long time. That individual was extremely compelling."
Charisma, as it happens, is exactly what The Economist recently said Harris lacks—along with time to make her case to voters. Following up in this week's cover story, the magazine identifies several tasks for Harris on the trail: to "articulate the convictions" of her prospective presidency, make something cogent of her background as a prosecutor and state attorney general, and "offer America hope." In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Republican White House deputy chief of staff (and World Bank president) Robert Zoellick offers another to-do list for Harris: treat the issue of abortion carefully, counter a political vulnerability in illegal immigration, "face inflation frustrations head on," explain the stakes in Ukraine, show she understands the importance of national defense, "own the future" by emphasizing US leadership on critical technologies, and acknowledge that federal deficits and debt are problematic. |
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The Elusiveness of a Gaza Ceasefire |
Ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the US Congress yesterday, CNN's Jennifer Hansler, Alex Marquardt, Jeremy Diamond, MJ Lee and Kylie Atwood reported that hopes for a Gaza ceasefire had been rising. And yet, since Biden outlined a plan in late May, a deal has remained elusive. Even as Israel said today it had recovered the bodies of five hostages, Bring Them Home Now, a group representing hostages' families, alleged that when it comes to ceasefire talks, Israeli government "foot-dragging is a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back. It effectively undermines the negotiations and indicates a serious moral failure." Examining the holdup earlier this month, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that Israel and Hamas had approved the broad outlines of a deal but that both Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar "may hope to gain more leverage from continued fighting. The remaining disputes may seem trivial, but some go to the core issue of future governance in Gaza, which remains the fuzziest part of the U.S. mediators' plan."
As for what history and game theory tell us, a Foreign Affairs essay by UCLA political scientist Eric Min argues that ceasefire pressure from third countries—even powerful ones like the US—often backfires. "The historical record reveals that such diplomatic interventions often have hugely negative consequences," Min writes.
Min suggests Israel and Hamas still have a fundamental, existential sticking point: "Hamas wants to survive as a political and military entity, and Israel wants to eliminate it. Regardless of any potential changes in the belligerents' positions regarding the presence of Israeli forces in Gaza, the rights of return for Palestinians, or the viability of a two-state solution—which are themselves intractable issues—fundamentally incompatible positions on Hamas's future afford no space for agreement. … Moreover, the fact that slight variants of the same three-phase plan have been proposed, accepted, and then rejected over multiple months, even as political and battlefield realities have changed, indicates that diplomatic efforts are primarily driven by third parties' desires to stop the fighting and are not closely tied to belligerents' real or perceived conditions." |
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How Can Cities Beat the Heat? |
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In the heat of summer, largely un-air-conditioned Paris is not the place to be. There's a reason why Parisians with means disappear from the city in August. Add to that a crush of tourists (and athletes, support staff and event organizers) from all over the world, and the Paris Summer Olympics sounded to some like a debacle in the making. Putting on the games required massive security planning, including dividing the city into zones and requiring QR codes to move around. Some countries said their Olympic delegations would bring their own AC units, and as The Wall Street Journal's Rachel Bachman and Joshua Robinson write, organizers have made AC units available for rent. "For much of the world," the Journal reporters write, "a few fitful nights of sweating in front of open windows is simply a reality of summer. But some Olympians are more reliant on climate control than others—namely the members of Team USA."
Various observers still see the games as a mess. Despite organizers' pledges of sustainability, Pacific University political scientist Jules Boykoff argues in Scientific American that "we're getting a recycled version of green capitalism that is oblivious in its incrementalism, vague with its methodology and loose with its accountability. It's too late for Paris, but if the Olympic organizers truly want to be sustainable, the Games need to reduce their size, limit the number of tourists who travel from afar, thoroughly greenify their capacious supply chains and open up their eco-books for bona fide accountability. Until then, the Olympics are a greenwash, a pale bit of lip service delivered at a time when climatological facts demand a systematic transformation in splendid Technicolor." As for expected carbon impact, emissions researcher Anne de Bortoli writes for The Conversation that for each of the anticipated 13–16 million attendees, the Paris Olympics is expected to emit carbon roughly "equivalent to the emissions generated by travelling 500 km by car ... or consuming 31 beef burgers or 83 bottles of wine."
In terms of temporary infrastructure and Parisian flair, Le Monde's Emma Barets, Manon Rescan and Sylvia Zappi sound a much more optimistic note about preparation for the games: "An Eiffel Tower decorated with five gigantic Olympic rings, an Assemblée Nationale featuring six colorful and sporty copies of the Venus de Milo, a Place de la Concorde transformed into a spectacular temporary stadium, a Grande Halle de La Villette transformed into a gigantic Club France or a Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville transformed into a huge festive terrace: The Paris of the Olympic Games is starting to look its best, a few days ahead of the opening ceremony. The upcoming global event has profoundly changed the face of some of the capital's tourist icons." |
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