The Gun Lobby Just Ran Out of Bullet Points
PLUS: A review of "The Diplomat" starring Keri Russell
Over the past month, mass shootings in Louisville, Kentucky (6 dead, 8 injured), Nashville, Tennessee (7 dead, 1 injured), and Dadeville, Alabama (4 dead, 32 injured) have served as horrible reminders this nation is in desperate need of stricter gun control laws. Unfortunately, pro-gun politicians watch these tragedies unfold over and over again and refuse to do much of anything about them, often times trotting out the same tired arguments to defend their inaction.
A spate of recent lower-profile shootings, however, have revealed pro-gun advocates don’t have a foot to stand on anymore when it comes to their defense of widespread gun ownership. In particular, the arguments that guns are needed for self-defense and that bad guys with guns must be countered with good guys with guns seem increasingly ridiculous after the past couple weeks. Consider:
In a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a couple who got lost while making a late-night Instacart delivery were shot at by a man after they turned onto his property, which was across the street from their intended destination.
In Kansas City, a sixteen-year-old teenager picking up his younger brothers was shot twice by a homeowner after the teenager rang the doorbell of the wrong house.
In rural Washington County, New York, a twenty-year-old woman was killed when the car she was in with a group of friends on their way to a party pulled into the wrong driveway and was shot at by a man sitting on his front porch.
In Elgin, Texas, two high school cheerleaders were wounded in a grocery store parking lot after one of the cheerleaders accidentally opened the door to a car she believed was her own. After getting into the correct car, the man who was sitting in the other car approached their vehicle. When the cheerleader rolled down her window to apologize, he began shooting at their car.
I’m sure gun rights advocates will say these are all just unfortunate misunderstandings. Bound to happen, right? These home- and car owners simply made a mistake, so we ought to take it easy on them. Their lawyers will probably tell you they’re nice, decent people, too.
But the individuals who accidentally pulled into the wrong driveway or accidentally rang the wrong doorbell or accidentally opened the wrong car door—nice and decent people as well, I presume—also simply made a mistake. The individuals wielding guns didn’t take it easy on them. I’m not sure why someone would think a person who mistakenly fired a gun at a non-threatening individual deserves a greater benefit of the doubt than the non-threatening individual who mistakenly came into their vicinity. Furthermore, the burden to get their actions right would definitely seem to lay with the people prepared to fire bullets at others. The consequences of their mistakes aren’t like the consequences of dialing the wrong number or, as it would be in a sane and decent world, ringing the wrong doorbell.
For years, the gun lobby has been throwing whatever arguments in defense of gun rights they can find at the wall to see what sticks. One by one, they have all failed. Some of their greatest hits:
Americans have been told if the government starts regulating guns—any kind of gun—hunters, sportsmen, farmers, and ranchers will soon find the firearms they use recreationally or as part of their work outlawed. But that’s a slippery slope argument. No one seriously looking at the issue of guns in America is proposing an all-or-nothing regulation. Legislative lines can and will be drawn to make sure hunters, sportsmen, farmers, and ranchers still have access to firearms.
Americans have been told a culture that glorifies gun violence in film, music, and video games is to blame. Yet people around the world consume the same culture without the resulting levels of gun violence found in the United States. People understand those cultural products are a fantasy. If anything, the cultural problem lies within the real-world cultures of gun ownership and conservative politics, which have fetishized the gun.
Americans have been told guns don’t kill people, “bad” and “crazy” people kill people. But again, other countries have “bad” and “crazy” people, too, yet with far less gun violence. It’s just that in the United States, it’s really easy for anyone—including those who shouldn’t—to get their hands on a gun. But there’s still a deeper problem with this argument, one that goes beyond calls for more stringent background checks. It’s that a “bad guy” doesn’t become a “bad guy” until they injure or kill someone with a gun. Up until that point, everything’s fine; they may even be a “responsible gun owner.” In this way, gun violence is framed by the gun lobby as an individual exception—“someone cracked”—rather than a problem endemic to American society that results in the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the United States every year. It’s akin to focusing blame on an individual for building a bomb at their kitchen table and blowing up their block when there are two or three people on every block assembling bombs in their homes. What do you think is going to happen?
Americans have been told they have a right to bear arms. It’s there in the Second Amendment. But the Supreme Court only really discovered that right fifteen years ago, and when they found it, the originalist who wrote the majority opinion had to pretend the text in the Second Amendment that conditioned that right on the state’s need for a well-regulated militia really meant “blah blah blah.” More fundamentally, though, the right to bear a device that uses a shooting tube to launch projectiles propelled by explosive force isn’t a basic liberty or human right according to any universally recognized scheme of human rights. It may be a “right” but it’s not a “Right” essential to personal autonomy, citizenship, or human flourishing and shouldn’t be treated as such. Deep down, Americans—even gun owners—know that. (For more on these arguments, see my January 2023 article, linked at the end of this article.)
Americans have been told they need guns to defend themselves against a potentially oppressive government. Right wingers want us to be prepared to participate in a sequel to the American Revolution if necessary. But historically, those in the United States who have most frequently been the targets of oppression and who can make the best case for rebelling against authority are the ones right-wingers definitely don’t want armed (let alone peacefully organized.) More recently, those calling for revolution tend to be bad judges of what really counts as government oppression: Extrajudicial police killings don’t get them riled up as much as programs that extend health care to millions of Americans, Black presidents not born in Kenya, mask mandates in the midst of a pandemic, and legitimate electoral outcomes they don’t like. The biggest threat today to America’s constitutional democracy isn’t the government. It’s the 1/6 rioters if they decide to arm themselves for their next go-round.
Which brings us to the argument the events of the past few weeks thoroughly debunk: That Americans need guns for self-defense. This is what the Supreme Court erroneously believes the Second Amendment amounts to; you can tell they’re wrong because while the Second Amendment references militias, it makes no mention of self-defense. Regardless, maybe that’s a good reason for people to acquire or even horde all manner of firearms: In the event a bad guy breaks into your home, accosts you on the street, shoots up your place of work, opens fire at the theater/concert/church/parade you’re attending, or rides into town to start rustling up some cattle, you can fight back.
This argument wasn’t working already for a number of reasons. First, if you’re worried about someone breaking into your home, security alarms are probably a better and safer option. Second, a gun kept for self-defense will more likely be used to accidentally injure oneself or an acquaintance or used in a successful suicide attempt than it will be to fend off someone intending to do you harm. Third, the average American is not the lead character in a Liam Neeson film and therefore not proficient enough to handle a gun in response to an armed assailant; this becomes even more true amid a chaotic situation. Four, assuming the best defense against a gun-toting maniac is an armed citizenry ignores the fact that many citizens can’t physically use guns (i.e., children, the elderly), shouldn’t at times be armed at all (i.e., a bunch of drunk people at a bar), or are not in a position to carry a gun on their person for self-defense (i.e., a team gathered on a field for a baseball practice; I dare someone to tell me I’m wrong about that one.)
Finally, despite the many people who possess guns in the United States, one almost never hears of someone actually using a gun successfully in self-defense. One would think gun rights advocates would be screaming from on high about all the times American citizens employed the Second Amendment to defend their lives and loved ones from bad guys, but crickets. And hospitals and morgues aren’t full of people who treaded on someone packing heat. Now some gun rights advocates might argue you can’t prove a negative, that the knowledge anyone at any time in this fair land of ours might be armed is enough to deter would-be criminals from running rampant in our streets and homes, but I would counter using an equally dubious logical leap that one would have therefore expected a corresponding decrease in crime following the recent surge in gun sales, but no. Instead, studies continue to demonstrate that gun violence is higher in places that have more permissive gun laws, which makes a ton of sense if you think about it.
Setting all that aside, however, what we’ve seen over the past few weeks is that people using guns to defend themselves have instead injured or killed people who pose no threat to them at all. That’s hardly a recommendation for the Second Amendment. According to the Supreme Court, the whole point behind the right to bear arms is self-defense, but it seems Americans struggle to use guns in that way. Analogously, it’s as if whenever we open our mouths to exercise our freedom of speech, we just end up vomiting all over each other. Maybe the right to bear arms isn’t a “right” we ought to have.
It’s pretty messed up when the good guys with guns who are supposed to be stopping the bad guys with guns are instead shooting totally innocent people for doing totally innocuous things. It sure seems to me the people who need to be defended in this country are those who may accidentally encounter a nervous person with a gun. Yet given the way the gun lobby has twisted the liberal argument for tolerance into a justification for a death cult (“Just as our tolerance of faiths we disagree with proves our devotion to personal freedom, our acceptance of school massacres, no matter how unfortunate they may be, proves this nation’s commitment to liberty”) I’m sure gun advocates will argue shooting a bunch of people who have done nothing that merits a bullet is the price we have to pay so someone someday can finally Kevin McCallister a burglar with an AR-15.
The gun lobby has run out of reasons that can justify an extensive regime of gun rights. In particular, the idea that Americans need access to guns to effectively defend themselves does not withstand scrutiny. To continue to pretend that it does means that in this nation, the occasional kid will end up taking a bullet to the skull for simply ringing a doorbell.
For further reading, see my article from January of this year:
Signals and Noise
House Republicans passed a debt ceiling bill with a bunch of provisions that are non-starters for Democrats. Now what?
The Wall Street Journal finds the GOP debt ceiling bill would raise taxes by $300 billion by repealing clean energy tax credits.
For a party that raised holy hell in January about wanting to devolve power to House committees and debate bills out in the open, Republicans in the House sure kept things behind closed doors as they debated and crafted the bill they intend on using to take the nation hostage over the debt limit. (As reported by Paul Kane of the Washington Post: “Majority Whip Tom Emmer [R-Minn.] barked at reporters when asked about the apparent hypocrisy, given McCarthy’s vows to run an open and transparent House. ‘You can make up whatever narrative you want. On our side, everything is going through regular order,’ Emmer said Thursday. ‘This is the debt ceiling. This is something that was done by the committee as the whole, which is the entire conference, and it effectively has gone through that process. You just weren’t included.’ This is most definitely not the ‘committee of the whole,’ a term that…other Republicans also latched onto to justify their abandonment of earlier promises.”)
Paul Kane of the Washington Post notes the U.S. is way closer to defaulting on the national debt than people realize.
I’m not saying these aren’t legitimate concerns, but when Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas says the reason Republicans sank a bipartisan bill to study how cannabis might help veterans suffering from pain and PTSD is because the study’s design is flawed (“this retrospective study would be done strictly through volunteers who would come forward and talk about their experience with marijuana and PTSD,” and “it depends on people to self-select and we don’t know how that would skew the results”) I laugh reminding myself how this party of quantitative analysis followed the science when it came to COVID and vaccines. (Republican opposition probably has more to do with a desire not to hand a political victory to the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Montana Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat running for re-election in a deep red state. So dumb; it’s not like Tester can’t run on supporting the bill regardless.)
Joe Manchin has said he would vote to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is his own bill. Biden wouldn’t sign such a bill, of course, but I don’t see why it’s good politics to run against your own creation. The politics of West Virginia is weird, and we as a nation are held captive to it.
McKay Coppins of The Atlantic has a fascinating interview with independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. My reaction: The big issue isn’t what Sinema has accomplished as a senator, but what she’s left unaccomplished.
ALERT: A poll conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found only 36% of young voters approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president.
According to a report by Alex Thompson of Axios, while Biden’s close aides say Biden is mentally sharp and has a lot of energy for someone his age, some concede his age has diminished his energy, leading the White House to limit his schedule and hold most public events between 10:00 and 4:00.
A Pew Research Center poll found Americans hold very pessimistic views about the future. Asked to look ahead to 2050, substantial majorities believe the U.S. will be weaker economically, less important in the world, more politically divided, and staring down a greater gap between rich and poor.
The founder of a second firm hired by the 2020 Trump campaign to investigate claims of fraud in the weeks after the 2020 election told federal prosecutors he did not uncover any evidence of fraud.
The Brennan Center for Justice found that one out of every five local elections officials will be working their first election in 2024, an unusually high number driven by the threats and harassment aimed at election workers during the 2020 election.
Here’s Don Trump in New Hampshire hugging a woman found guilty of defying police orders on Capitol grounds on 1/6. He signed her backpack and told her she’s been “through too much.”
According to a new NBC news poll, only 24% of Americans have a positive view of the MAGA movement, with 45% expressing negative views. That positive rating is lower than the Republican Party (33%), Donald Trump (34%), the Democratic Party (36%), Joe Biden (38%), and the Black Lives Matter Movement (38%). A slight majority of Republicans, however, has a positive view of the MAGA movement, while only 12% of independents view it positively. That same poll found a majority of Americans hold a negative view of Trump (53%); Biden, on the other hand, is viewed negatively by 48% of Americans.
Jonathan Swan and Carl Hulse of the New York Times report that when Republican Montana Senator and Senate GOP campaign committee chair Steve Daines told Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell he planned on endorsing Don Trump for president this week, McConnell did not object.
Arizona Republicans actually kicked an election denier out of the state legislature, but, as Yvonne Wingett Sanchez of the Washington Post reports, only after she claimed a Mexican drug-cartel was secretly paying Republican state officials as part of an election-fraud scheme.
Kimberlee Kruesi and Ali Swenson of AP note Republican state legislators are redefining the word “insurrection” to mean people who disrupt legislative business with non-violent protests.
The Republican-led Montana State House of Representatives has banned Zooey Zephyr, a duly-elected transgender member of House, from attending and speaking during floor sessions. The offense? Telling the supporters of a bill banning gender-affirming care that they would have “blood on their hands” if the bill became law. Meanwhile, the nonbinary son of Republican Montana Governor Greg Gianforte is lobbying his father to veto the bill.
Ladies and gentlemen, Republican Montana State Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe:
Seekins-Crowe is supposedly “pro-life,” but I’d say that’s debatable after the doozy she recently dropped during a floor debate about a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors like her own transgender daughter: “One of the big issues that we have heard today and we’ve talked about lately is that without surgery the risk of suicide goes way up. Well, I am one of those parents who lived with a daughter who was suicidal for three years. Someone once asked me, ‘Wouldn’t I just do anything to help save her?’ And I really had to think and the answer was, ‘No.’ I was not going to give in to her emotional manipulation because she was incapable of making those decisions, and I had to make those decisions for her. I was not going to let her tear apart my family and I was not going to let her tear apart me because I had to be strong for her, I had to have a vision for her life when she had none, was incapable of having none. I was lost. I was scared. I spent hours on the floor in prayer because I didn’t know when I woke up if my daughter was going to be alive or not. But I knew that I had to make those right decisions for her so that she would have a precious, successful adulthood at that time.” Way to make your daughter’s agony about yourself, Kerri.
Disney has sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” over DeSantis’s attempts to punish Disney for speaking out against Florida’s education law that limits what can be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity in state public schools.
Florida’s DeSantis-appointed Surgeon General was found to have personally altered a scientific study to suggest COVID vaccines posed a higher risk for young men than the study actually concluded.
North Dakota has passed a near-total ban on abortion. According to the new state law, a victim of rape or incest would only be allowed to get an abortion during the first six weeks of a pregnancy. Abortions to treat some medical emergencies would be allowed throughout a pregnancy.
Republicans in the states are working overtime to keep initiatives pertaining to abortion off the ballot in 2024. Ohio Republicans are even going so far as to alter rules that have been in place for decades that govern how ballot initiatives make it to the ballot.
According to an NPR poll, nearly 2/3 of Americans oppose banning medical abortion. The same poll found 62% of Americans have little confidence in the Supreme Court, and 68% favor term limits for Supreme Court justices.
Don Trump has come out in support of a national law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks. States would presumably be allowed to regulate abortion as they see fit during the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy. Reaction to this proposal from across the political spectrum will be very interesting to follow.
A FOX News poll has found over 80% of Americans favor criminal background checks on all gun buyers, improving enforcement of existing gun laws, raising the legal age to buy a gun to 21, requiring mental health checks on gun buyers, and allowing police to take guns from those considered a danger to themselves or others. Over 75% favor a 30-day waiting period for all gun purchases. Over 60% favor banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Generally, Americans favor gun control measures over arming citizens to reduce gun violence.
In the wake of the Clarence Thomas scandal, Chief Justice John Roberts has declined a request to testify before Congress about Supreme Court ethics. Instead, he said when it comes to ethics, everything on the Court is fine, and got every justice on the Supreme Court to sign-off on a letter expressing a similar sentiment.
The North Carolina Supreme Court has overturned a roughly one-year-old ruling that made partisan gerrymanders illegal. The move is expected to cost Democrats up to four House seats.
By Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal: “For Saner Politics, Try Stronger Parties”
By David Graham of The Atlantic: “Tucker’s Successor Will Be Worse”
By Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic: “Will Tucker Carlson Become Alex Jones?”
The far-right news channel Newsmax has experienced a big bump in ratings following Carlson’s departure from FOX News.
Republican operative Rick Wilson is worried Carlson will run for president. (“Tucker is one of the very small number of political celebrities in this country who has the name ID, the personal wealth, the stature to actually declare and run for president and in a Republican primary run in the same track Donald Trump did: the transgressive, bad boy candidate, the one who lets you say what you want to say, think what you want to think, act how you want to act, no matter how grotesque it is. Among Republicans, he’s a beloved figure. He’s right now in the Republican universe a martyr – and there ain’t nothing they want more than a martyr.”)
Steven Lee Myers, Sheera Frenkel and Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times found Twitter’s decision to end its practice of authenticating accounts for free (the “blue checkmark”) has undermined the platform’s reliability as a news source. For example, there are currently eleven accounts impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.
James Surowiecki writes in The Atlantic about why attaching work requirements to government benefit programs doesn’t work.
John Shiffman and Leah Douglas of Reuters report that demand for food assistance at food banks in the United States has returned to levels last seen during the height of the pandemic.
Basic economic signals don’t indicate we’re on the verge of a recession.
Surface-level ocean temperatures are crushing records this year. Even more ominously, they aren’t correcting themselves.
Vincent’s Picks: The Diplomat
On The Americans (2013-2018), Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys played Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two KGB agents posing as a middle-class American couple in the DC area during the Reagan administration. When they weren’t tending to their travel agency or raising their two American-born children, they were running undercover ops for the Soviets that might involve infiltrating government facilities, seducing potential sources, and assassination. They also had a very complicated marriage they needed to attend to, one that was arranged, essentially fake, and constantly subjected to the demands of the job, but that also had to be convincing enough to divert suspicion and that eventually stirred within them a real sense of mutual affection.
Russell returns to TV screens once again as one half of a complicated couple caught up in a web of international intrigue in The Diplomat, now streaming on Netflix. Russell stars as Kate Wyler, a career State Department official who puts in long hours and schools herself on the details of her work to make a real difference in the world. Wyler is a stickler for procedure and protocol, which she sees as a kind of language that can convey respect, telegraph intentions, build trust, and produce results. As one of the most talented and competent members of the U.S. Foreign Service, she is anticipating an assignment to the challenging overseas post of Cairo. Instead, she is summoned to the Oval Office and told she has been selected to serve as ambassador to the United Kingdom, a mostly ceremonial position requiring no expertise in international affairs.
As it turns out, however, the U.S. desperately needs a skilled hand in the Court of St. James’s. An explosion onboard a U.K. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf has left over forty British sailors dead. Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear, who also played the role of PM in the memorable first episode of Black Mirror) not only blames Iran but is ready to bomb them in retaliation, which would spark a major conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. is obliged to go to war alongside their ally but would prefer to avoid hostilities if possible. Wyler is tasked with managing the crisis for the United States in London and immediately sets out to determine if Iran really was responsible for the attack.
But Kate isn’t the only Wyler headed to England. Her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) a swashbuckling diplomat known for his gregariousness and freewheeling style, is trailing just a few steps behind her. It’s a role reversal for this “tandem couple”; Hal is usually the one mugging for cameras and schmoozing political bigwigs while Kate immerses herself in practical matters and policy minutiae. (As the season goes along, viewers will find the relationship is vaguely Clintonian in more ways than one, but only if we forget Bill was also a wonk.) Hal—who has served as an ambassador before and carries the title—is always present, threatening to muck up Kate’s carefully designed plans or steal the spotlight. The White House, however, seems to believe this crisis calls for someone with Kate’s skill set, but there is more to this assignment than meets the eye: As White House Chief of Staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah) explains to Kate’s State Department handler Stuart Heyford (Ato Essandoh), the Vice President will need to resign soon, and Mrs. Wyler has the sort of profile President Rayburn (Michael McKean) is looking for as a replacement. The London assignment will test if she’s up for the job.
The showrunner for The Diplomat is Debora Cahn, whose previous stints as a writer on The West Wing, Grey’s Anatomy, and Homeland influence her work here. It’s most apparent in the show’s snappy, walk-and-talk dialogue, a style popularized on The West Wing. The Diplomat is considerably more jaded than that political drama, so don’t watch this show if you’re looking for something noble and uplifting.
I would say, however, that the show is smarter about politics than The West Wing or Netflix’s original political melodrama, House of Cards, and not just because The Diplomat leans hard on dense, technical diplomatic language. Unlike those shows, in which a rhetorical flourish or Machiavellian stratagem might prove decisive in resolving a political conflict, The Diplomat knows power is dispersed throughout the political world and that one politico’s moves can easily be countered by others. The characters here are playing a kind of three-dimensional chess, aware they’re trying to position themselves for a long multifaceted game rather than constantly maneuvering for a checkmate. At the same time, they’re operating in a world of imperfect information, working to figure out what they know they know, as well as what they don’t know they don’t know. (Eidra Park, the CIA’s London Station Chief played by Ali Ahn, dramatizes this particular dilemma.)
The Diplomat also has a good sense for how the personal comes into play in high-level politics (although the show does sometimes dip into melodrama.) Here, the personal is often a matter of temperament and professional obligation. Rather than harboring some deeply personal or ideological motivation, the characters look to defend their turf, reputation, and ability to maneuver. While egos do get bruised, they don’t care much about what others think of them personally so long as they command others’ professional respect. Sometimes their jobs require them to accept humiliation. Unfortunately, as the first season approaches its conclusion, the political becomes more personal, particularly as Kate Wyler’s relationship with the world-weary U.K. Foreign Secretary Austin Dennison (David Gyasi) develops, interoffice romances emerge, and the show begins devoting more time to the state of the Wylers’ marriage (although that aspect of the plot may be impossible to downplay.)
The show does need to figure out how to better handle Kate Wyler’s character. One thing about this show that I’ve neglected to mention so far is that it is actually quite funny. That isn’t so much a problem when it comes to the somewhat buffoonish Hal Wyler, but Russell at times seems to be fighting the script when the joke is on Kate. Russell knows it’s too easy for the audience to laugh at a powerful woman who’s been humiliated or embarrassed. Sometimes that’s fine, but this show isn’t Veep, and Russell is careful to protect her character from a cheap shot viewers might interpret as comeuppance for a smart, professional woman.
That’s an important balance to strike because The Diplomat has an important point to make about the different approaches politicians take to politics. On the one side are those like Kate Wyler, Heyford, Appiah, and Dennison (on this show, all women or people of color) individuals who ascended to their positions on merit, take their jobs seriously, aim to serve the greater good, are always cognizant of the real-world consequences of government action, try to keep the world from spinning out of control, work themselves to exhaustion, and are a bit insufferable. On the other side are those like Hal Wyler, PM Trowbridge, and President Rayburn (each a white man) who treat politics as a game they love to play, follow their ambition and the whims of public opinion, regard others as a means to their own ends, aren’t afraid to stir things up or behave outlandishly for effect, follow their gut, swing hard between emotions, revel in their jobs and the affection of others, and rely on their charisma to get them out of trouble. It’s the difference between a career diplomat and a politician, between the science of administration and the art of politics.
The Diplomat seems to argue we need public servants who can strike a balance between politics and administration. Kate is an uber-competent pro who works within the international rules-based order to preserve the peace and create the conditions that allow humanity to thrive. Yet as a diplomat, she also knows she needs to find ways to ingratiate herself with allies and adversaries alike and cajole them into doing what she would like them to do. (Kate admits at one point during the show that the key work she did on the Iranian nuclear agreement was achieved not in the conference room but in off-the-record meetings held by the back alley dumpster.) Kate sees in her husband Hal a loose cannon whose lack of discipline can blow up months-worth of negotiations in a matter of seconds. But Hal’s creativity, intuition, affability, and persuasive power allow him to open new avenues for political action, and he knows enough about the rules of diplomacy to know where they might need to be broken. He also knows those rules are necessary to keep people like him in check.
Given the twist that occurs at the end of the last episode—this is a very twisty series, by the way—Cahn expects The Diplomat will run for multiple seasons. If we are treated to another installment of this series, I suspect Kate will begin to realize she needs to adopt Hal’s methods—however off-putting they may be—to achieve her well-intentioned ends. The unavoidable tragedy of politics is that may be an impossible balance to strike.