For months, I have been calling for an end to partisan bickering, which is why I was profoundly moved to see a right-wing podcaster and a disgraced presidential failson bond over mutual paranoia.
I am often asked at Georgetown dinner parties and Aspen Institute panels how we can bridge the gaping chasm in American political life. I usually suggest a blue-ribbon commission on civility, perhaps co-chaired by myself and a sensible private equity CEO. But this week, I was humbled. True unity has emerged not from a think tank, but from a room decorated with a crucifix, heart-shaped orchids, and a coffee mug labeled "conspiracy theorist."
When Hunter Biden sat down at Candace Owens’s house for a nearly two-hour podcast interview, the chattering classes scoffed. They were quick to point out that Owens had previously screamed in all-caps that Biden was an "alleged sex predator" and a "DEGENERATE THAT SHOULD BE IN PRISON" who hailed from a "SCUM family." But as I have always told my editors while expensing lunches at Café Milano: true statesmanship requires looking past minor disagreements about whether one of you belongs in federal lockup.
What the coastal elites failed to see was the beautiful, moderate consensus forming before their very eyes. When Owens opened the interview by asking Biden, "The cocaine that was found at the White House, was it yours?" she wasn't attacking him; she was engaging in the Socratic method. And as they spent the next two hours bonding over being deeply misunderstood by the very systems that enriched them, I wept. Finally, a dialogue. Finally, two people with absolutely no grip on reality reaching across the aisle to question the circumstances of Charlie Kirk’s death together.
Some cynics have suggested that a wealthy right-wing grifter and a former president's son swapping paranoid theories does nothing for the average American struggling to buy groceries. But this completely misses the point of political discourse, which is to provide me with interesting things to ponder from the Acela quiet car. If we cannot celebrate two elites finding common ground over the shared belief that powerful, shadowy forces are out to get them specifically, then what is this country even for?
When Hunter and Candace looked into each other's eyes and agreed that their respective legal and professional consequences were actually elaborate global plots, we witnessed the birth of a new radical center.
If we are to survive as a republic, we need more of this. We need more disgraced sons of former Democratic presidents sitting in the homes of right-wing podcasters who just last year were calling for their total destruction. It is the only sensible path forward. I am already drafting a proposal for them to co-host a healing retreat at Davos, and I very much expect to be invited.