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http://nyti.ms/1P6F1YA

SundayReview | OPINION

By PIERS J. SELLERS JAN. 16, 2016

I’M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my

professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed

through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of

60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible

solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply

foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was

continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?

After handling the immediate business associated with the medical news —

informing family, friends, work; tidying up some finances; putting out stacks of

unread New York Times Book Reviews to recycle; and throwing a large “Limited

Edition” holiday party, complete with butlers, I had some time to sit at my kitchen

table and draw up the bucket list.

Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on

Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all

those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon. Instead, I concluded

that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love,

and get back to my office as quickly as possible.

I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on

the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own,

not NASA’s). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based

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observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet

works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The

work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating.

Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations

will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align

politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science

side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that

climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if

not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in

Paris set a goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to 2 degrees

Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is

noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best

science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.

It’s doubtful that we’ll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it

our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous

changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water

and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises,

model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.

All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by

2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired

military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model

predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already

under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes.

They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses.

Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to

historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all

flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.

Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial.

Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and

predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most


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Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe

that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part

of this whole business.

The initial heavy lifting will have to be done by policy makers. I feel for them.

It’s hard to take a tough stand on an important but long-term issue in the face of so

many near-term problems, amid worries that reducing emissions will weaken our

global economic position and fears that other countries may cheat on their emissions

targets.

Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is

a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and

use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures

associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches

are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term

impacts to the climate.

Ultimately, though, it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world

to save us. They must come up with the new technologies and the means of

implementing them. The technical and organizational challenges of solving the

problems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution are enormous, and

they must be solved within a few decades with minimum disruption to the global

economy. This will likely entail a major switch to nuclear, solar and other renewable

power, with an electrification of our transport system to the maximum extent

possible. These engineers and industrialists are fully up to the job, given the right

incentives and investments. You have only to look at what they achieved during

World War II: American technology and production catapulted over what would

have taken decades to do under ordinary conditions and presented us with a world in

1945 that was completely different from the late 1930s.

What should the rest of us do? Two things come to mind. First, we should brace

for change. It is inevitable. It will appear in changes to the climate and to the way we

generate and use energy. Second, we should be prepared to absorb these with

appropriate sang-froid. Some will be difficult to deal with, like rising seas, but many


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others could be positive. New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways

we cannot anticipate. There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that

our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of

the challenges and risks. History is replete with examples of us humans getting out

of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers

were often in denial of the threat.

As for me, I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on

this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating

alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across

oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of

forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles

along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely

precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.

And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.

Piers J. Sellers is the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard

Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut,

he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for

the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 17, 2016, on page SR6 of the New York edition withthe headline: Cancer and Climate Change.

© 2016 The New York Times Company


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The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JAN. 17, 2016

This is a moment many thought would never come: Iran has delivered on its

commitment under a 2015 agreement with the United States and other major

powers to curb or eliminate the most dangerous elements of its nuclear program.

The world is now safer for this.

The International Atomic Energy Agency verified on Saturday that Iran has

shipped over 8.5 tons of enriched uranium to Russia so Iran can’t use that in

bomb-making, disabled more than 12,000 centrifuges and poured concrete into the

core of a reactor at Arak designed to produce plutonium.

On Sunday, President Obama hailed these steps as having “cut off every single

path Iran could have used to build a bomb” and noted that engagement with Iran has

created a “window to try to resolve important issues.” Most important of all, he said,

“We’ve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to

another war in the Middle East.”

Still, there are daunting challenges ahead, including ensuring the deal is strictly

adhered to, an obligation for the United States, Russia, China and Europe. Cheating

should be much harder, given that Iran will be subjected to continuous and intrusive

monitoring by the I.A.E.A. of its nuclear enrichment facilities, centrifuge production

and uranium mines. And even if the Iranians were to attempt to produce enough

nuclear fuel for a bomb, it will now take them more than a year to do so. Before the

agreement, that breakout time was two to three months.

The deal is a testament to patient diplomacy and President Obama’s visionary

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determination to pursue a negotiated solution to the nuclear threat, despite

relentless attempts by his political opponents to sabotage the initiative. After more

than 30 years of hostility between the two countries, President Hassan Rouhani of

Iran and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who took office in 2013,

pursued the nuclear deal and its implementation with a pragmatic and constructive

attitude.

This is also a moment to celebrate the release of the Washington Post journalist

Jason Rezaian and three other Americans of Iranian descent who were detained by

Iran, in some cases for years. Mr. Rezaian and the others should never have been

held in the first place. Their freedom came in exchange for seven Iranians arrested

by the United States on charges of violating sanctions on Iran. Separately, another

American who was recently detained was also freed. Resolving disputes often

requires compromise, and these developments make it more likely, although far

from certain, that the United States and Iran could cooperate in the future.

The value of increased American-Iranian engagement was obvious last week

when Iran quickly released 10 American sailors after their two patrol boats

mistakenly drifted into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s hard-line military

boarded the ships and released photos of the sailors in custody, a possible violation

of the Geneva Conventions. Ordinarily, this would cause a crisis — and American

hard-liners tried to make it so by denouncing Mr. Obama and denouncing Iran. But

after a series of phone calls between Secretary of State John Kerry and Mr. Zarif,

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, backed Mr. Rouhani and Mr. Zarif,

who moved quickly to defuse the incident. Both sides knew a prolonged standoff

could put the nuclear deal at risk.

Of course, neither compliance with the nuclear agreement nor the release of the

Americans means that Iran should not be subject to criticism or new sanctions for

violation of other United Nations resolutions or American laws. Once the detained

Americans left Iran, Mr. Obama moved quickly to impose new, limited sanctions on

11 Iranian companies and individuals for their involvement in two recent ballistic

missile tests.

Iran’s critics are incensed that in return for complying with the nuclear deal, the


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country will get access to $100 billion of its money that has been frozen in overseas

banks and that lifting sanctions will enable it to integrate into the international

economy. The critics fear Iran will use the money to destabilize the region further,

but Mr. Rouhani’s greater imperative is to spend the funds on the many social and

economic needs of Iranians. His promises to improve their lives will be tested during

next month’s parliamentary elections.

Leaders don’t give up their nuclear weapons for nothing. A bargain with Iran

was necessary. It might even serve as an example for dealing with North Korea,

which may have enough fuel for 16 weapons and is producing many more.



A version of this editorial appears in print on January 18, 2016, on page A20 of the National edition withthe headline: A Safer World, Thanks to the Iran Pact .



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SundayReview | OP-ED COLUMNIST

Frank Bruni JAN. 16, 2016

IF your very candidacy and identity rest on your supposed talent for victory, can you

survive a defeat?

Can you continue to call yourself a winner if you’ve been a loser — and if “loser”

is your favorite way of closing the book on someone, your final word, the workhorse

in your brimming lexicon of slurs, exiting your mouth so reflexively that it’s

essentially your exhalation, your carbon dioxide: “loser,” “loser,” “loser.”

Donald Trump has a problem that the other candidates for the Republican

nomination don’t. He’s put an obstacle in his path that they haven’t. He doesn’t

merely assert dominance. He claims something close to omnipotence. (Remember

that laughable physician’s report?)

Neither his image nor his ego leaves any room for a setback, any allowance for

second place. And as Iowa draws near and several polls suggest the strong possibility

that Ted Cruz will finish ahead of him there, it’s time to talk about what that would

mean for a self-enamored emperor who pretty much insists on his own perfection —

and who has built his brand on it.

At that point, Trump would no longer be a brilliant exception to the laws of

political gravity. He’d be someone whose lax management of his Iowa operation was

laid bare, whose basic competence was in dispute. He’d be one of many exhausted

soldiers, girding himself for a muddy slog. That’s not the path he plotted, the myth

he’s selling. That’s not how he’s rigged.

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Other candidates can rack up a few disappointments. They haven’t made their

cases by pointing to their percentages, their ratings, their crowds. They don’t draw

such a sharp, unforgiving line between winners and losers. They don’t equate being

on top with being the best.

Trump does. Incessantly. It’s his worldview, his philosophy, his morality, his

tautology.

He’s inverted the usual political logic. Typically, candidates cite their

qualifications as the reason that voters should affirm them. Trump asserts that he’s

qualified because voters have affirmed him, or at least because they seem poised to.

Challenged on his policies (which don’t really exist) or his credentials (which are

dubiously applicable to the presidency), he whips out his poll numbers as proof of

his worthiness. Sometimes he whips them out just for fun. And as he holds them

high, he makes the argument that he must have good ideas, good sense and good

preparation. After all, he’s winning!

But by that reasoning, losing wouldn’t be just a fluke, just a failure of the body

politic to recognize and reward majesty when they behold it. No, it would be

evidence that he’s inferior or at least unexceptional. It would destroy the brand’s

foundation.

His bid for the presidency is all triumphalism, all superlatives. It rejects any

humility. It forbids any humbling — especially the first time that voting becomes

actual instead of theoretical and Iowans crown a champ.

When he kicked off his campaign from the gilded throne of Trump Tower last

June, he didn’t merely say that he’d create jobs.

“I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” he decreed,

emphasizing a divine patrimony.

On the day when he and his hair move into the White House, “unbelievable”

blessings will rain down on this parched land of ours. He will be “the best thing that

ever happened to women,” “the best security president.”


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And did you know that he has “the world’s greatest memory,” by his own

estimation?

“It’s one thing everyone agrees on,” he added, which is wrong, because many of

us at The Times don’t agree at all, especially not after the most recent Republican

debate, on Thursday night. He was asked then about his proposal, made during a

recent meeting with the newspaper’s editorial board, for a 45 percent tax on Chinese

goods brought into this country. And his magic powers of recollection eluded him.

“That’s wrong,” he said. “They were wrong. It’s The New York Times. They are

always wrong.”

Except we weren’t, not about this. A transcript and an audio recording of the

meeting unequivocally demonstrate as much.

We’re probably losers anyway. That’s the designation he assigns to anyone who

fails to genuflect in his presence.

He has meted it out promiscuously — and diversely. The megastar Cher is a

“loser.” So are the mogul Mark Cuban, the basketball player Chris Jackson, the war

hero John McCain.

The ranks of talk show hosts, journalists, pundits and political consultants are

especially robust with losers, including Ana Navarro, Bill Maher, Howard Stern and

Karl Rove, who’s not just a “loser” but “dopey” and a “total fool,” as Trump tweeted.

His testy Twitter feed is his Hall of Shame. It’s where the losers are rounded up and

publicly flogged.

And his go-to arguments for why someone is a loser, a dope or a dummy is that

he or she has made erroneous predictions or been repudiated by the ratings, the

marketplace, the audience. A television personality is a loser if not all that many

viewers tune in.

So what if not all that many Iowans turn out for Trump? What if, at the least,

more of them choose Cruz? How can Trump dismiss the precise kind of judgment

and measurement with which he dismisses everyone else?


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Lately he’s started to hedge, alternating prophecies that he’ll win Iowa with

statements that he hopes to. It’s “a little too close for comfort,” he told voters in

Cedar Falls last week. I’ll say.

For other candidates a loss is a part of the process, a prompt for

self-examination, a cause for a reset and maybe an embarrassment. For Trump it’s

an existential crisis. Who is he if he can’t look down on all of his rivals? What does he

become if he has to look up to one of them, especially if the one is a natural-born

irritant like Cruz?

“Comeback kid” won’t fit Trump. It’s a middle seat in coach for a titan with his

own planes — plural. (His own helicopters, too.) If he’s wedged into it, he’ll come

unglued. I mean, more than he already has.

When he appeared on the late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” last

month, Kimmel teased him by claiming to have written a children’s book for Trump.

Its title? “Winners Aren’t Losers.”

This is my point, and this is Trump’s pickle. If Iowa’s voters don’t swoon for

him, it erases the whole gaudy prelude to that moment. He ceases to be the best, the

most, the greatest. Trump will have been trumped, which means he’s not the same

Trump at all.



A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 17, 2016, on page SR3 of the New York edition withthe headline: Donald Trump’s Existential Pickle.



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Ross Douthat JAN. 16, 2016

IN 2014 Matt Bai published a book called “All the Truth Is Out,” a history of Gary

Hart’s scandal-driven downfall that doubled as a lament for political journalism’s

surrender to the lure of tabloid culture.

Bai’s book was a great read, and nobody would dispute his point that there’s far

less privacy for politicians than in the days when Lyndon Johnson could tell a group

of reporters: “You may see me coming in and out of a few women’s bedrooms while I

am in the White House, but just remember, that is none of your business.”

But his book’s title was still a little bit misleading. Even today, we don’t get all

the truth about the sex lives of the powerful and famous. We get more of it than

people got in the 1960s, but it still often comes in fragments, glimpses, rumor and

conjecture.

You can read a thousand supermarket stories, for instance, without getting any

closer to the truth about most Hollywood relationships. And while the mainstream

press isn’t necessarily protective of public figures, neither is it rushing out to do

National Enquirer-style digging whenever there’s a plausible rumor in the wind. For

every Eliot Spitzer or Mark Sanford, there’s a scandalous story that flares and

vanishes amid a lot of journalistic discomfort about touching it.

There’s also a certain randomness to when a scandal actually breaks big. To take

a nonpolitical example, Bill Cosby’s sexual exploitations were kinda-sorta in the

public record for years and years, but they were a footnote in profiles and

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biographies until Hannibal Buress starting talking about Cosby-the-rapist in his

comedy routines. Then suddenly, it was a story, a cascade of stories, and the whole

truth or something close was out.

Similarly, in the political realm, The National Enquirer first published John

Edwards-Rielle Hunter stories in October of 2007. But Edwards was able to make

his way through an entire primary campaign before the mainstream media finally,

reluctantly, started reporting on his love child.

Which brings us to Bill Clinton, whose old scandals are once more in the news —

because Donald Trump is talking about them, because Juanita Broaddrick took to

Twitter to reassert her claim that Clinton raped her in 1978, and because today’s

liberal deference toward rape victims makes an uneasy fit with how the Clinton camp

dealt with accusations from Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones in the

1990s.

This has produced a lot of discussion about whether the former president’s

sexual past is “fair game” during his wife’s 2016 campaign. But that question tends

to assume that there’s some consensus about the former president’s sexual past. It

assumes that all the truth is out.

In reality, though, the narrative around Clinton’s sexual past is highly unstable,

with several variations that have a plausible claim on being true.

There’s the official Clintonite narrative, in which the former president strayed

with Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky, was forgiven by his wife and daughter,

and deserves to have his repentance respected.

Then there’s the narrative that I suspect most Americans believe, in which the

former president was much more of a tomcat in Arkansas, and probably has

tomcatted occasionally in his post-presidency — but always consensually, and lately

in ways that have minimized exposure or embarrassment.

If either of these narratives are true, then Clinton’s sex life will be a non-issue in

2016. If an adulterer, even a frequent adulterer, is all he is, then an America that

didn’t want him impeached in the 1990s isn’t going to object to having him as the


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First Gentlemen today.

But suppose you believe the Broaddrick story. Liberals dismissed it during the

impeachment days, but if you read the summary of the case from the (mostly liberal)

Dylan Matthews at the (mostly liberal) website Vox, this dismissal looks unfair.

There’s an inescapable he-said/she-said dynamic, but one need not be a “believe all

rape allegations” absolutist to find her claim persuasive.

If she’s telling the truth, then Clinton’s sexual past becomes something more

predatory. The slippage between a powerful man’s dalliances and straightforward

predation is something that could happen just once. But looked at in the light of a

credible rape allegation, there are all sorts of Clinton stories — the Willey and Jones

cases, the rumors collected by Jones’s lawyers, the old tales of state troopers being

used as procurers, the 2002 globetrotting on the jet of a billionaire who’s also a

convicted statutory rapist — that could suggest a darker pattern, tending toward the

Cosby-esque.

The truth about Bill Clinton’s past, then, is that we don’t actually know the

truth. And even in our tabloid-driven age, it’s quite possible that we simply never

will.

But if the question is, “Does Bill’s past matter for Hillary’s campaign?,” the

answer depends less on what we know right now than on what might be waiting to

come out.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/DouthatNYT.



A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 17, 2016, on page SR11 of the New York edition withthe headline: The Bill Question.



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Maureen Dowd JAN. 16, 2016

WASHINGTON — AFTER running as a man last time around, Hillary Clinton is now

running as a woman.

Matthew Dowd, the former W. strategist who became an independent, says

Hillary got it backward: She should have run as a woman in 2008, when she was

beating back a feminized antiwar candidate. And she should have run as a man this

time, when Americans feel beleaguered and scared and yearn for something “big and

masculine and strong,” as Dowd put it.

Despite the deafening dearth of excitement among younger women, Hillary has

cast herself as Groundbreaking Granny.

She’s campaigning with Lena Dunham, Katy Perry and Demi Lovato and is

selling T-shirt pantsuits on her website. And she showed up last week on Lifetime,

sharing a white couch with Amanda de Cadenet, who hosts a cozy chat show with

women. Hillary shared the childhood woe of being told by boys in her neighborhood

that she couldn’t play with them because she was a girl.

She told Rachel Maddow she wouldn’t rule out an all-estrogen ticket by

choosing a female running mate.

A group of women in the Senate — most of whom deserted Hillary for Barack

Obama in 2008 — descended on Iowa on Friday in the spirit of sisterhood.

“There’s this element of women getting to where they are by working harder and

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being accountable,” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told me on the eve of their

swing. “Right now, Americans are demanding that politicians be accountable

because they’re tired of all the bull going on.”

And Hillary told the Time reporter Jay Newton-Small for a new book, “Broad

Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works,” that she would

govern differently as the first female president.

“I just think women in general are better listeners, are more collegial, more

open to new ideas and how to make things work in a way that looks for win-win

outcomes,” Hillary said.

Of course, if she had been a better listener on her health care initiative and the

Iraq invasion, those two towering issues might not have scuppered her.

It always sounds nice to say that women are more collegial and empathetic and

helpful to other women and that they see the big picture more clearly, and

sometimes it’s true. But sometimes it’s not — especially with hard-boiled alpha

women trying to break gender barriers.

Look at Carly Fiorina’s crash at Hewlett-Packard.

Since we cannot know if a woman is going to overcompensate on machismo —

as Hillary did on the unjustified Iraq invasion — we may want to look at it a different

way.

It may be more relevant to ask if someone is a cat or a dog.

The feline Barack Obama began his aloof reign wanting to prowl alone on the

stage and he’s ending it the same way. His State of the Union speech was an exercise

in thumbing his nose at the noxious obstructionist Republicans, and lecturing

Americans — who have gone from strong and silent to weak and chatty — to grow up

about ISIS and stop acting as though World War III has broken out.

The hyper-rational President Obama, who disdains easy emotion in politics, has

had a hard time offering comfort or capturing the public mood at moments when

people don’t feel safe, from the Christmas underwear bomber to the BP oil spill to


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the rise of ISIS.

Juliette Kayyem, his former assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said it’s

important to try to soothe people’s fears by calmly explaining exactly what is being

done to protect them.

The author of the forthcoming “Security Mom” warned Democratic senators to

take Americans’ unease seriously when she spoke at the senators’ retreat at

Nationals Park last week.

“Otherwise,” she said, “the Republican paranoia, the craziness and hysteria of

‘It’s the Muslims’ and ‘Just keep them out,’ fills the vacuum.”

She cited a recent Wall Street Journal story suggesting that Republicans may get

a boost from “security moms,” women who moved toward the Republican Party after

9/11 and who have gotten jittery again after the spate of ISIS attacks. The story noted

that only 35 percent of women in a CNN/ORC International poll from December

approved of the president’s performance on terrorism, compared with 64 percent

who disapproved.

You can paint the fear of ISIS as overblown and irrational, as Obama suggested

to columnists at the White House and in his State of the Union speech, but that’s the

wrong approach, Kayyem said.

“You can say someone is more likely to die in a car this weekend than from a

terrorist attack,” she said. “But people are feeling it and you can’t ignore that fear.”

W. was all about the gut and Obama is all about the head and now Donald

Trump is soaring by being the opposite of Obama, all about the gut again.

Both Hillary and Trump have been emphasizing that they will do a lot more

schmoozing with lawmakers and others who disagree with them, vowing to be dogs

with a bone, eager canines offering paws, and not a cool cat stalking away at the first

sign of difficulty or when affection is most desired.

“You have to build those relationships and constantly be looking for common

ground no matter how small a sliver it may be,” Hillary told The Des Moines Register


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on Monday.

At a town hall talk in Iowa on Friday, Trump made it clear that he would not be

as scornful of wheeling, dealing and wheedling as Obama.

“You get them in a room and you say ‘Do it,’” Trump said about working on a

budget with Congress. “Obama doesn’t get anyone in a room. He tried I think for a

little while and it failed. … So he signs executive orders and then everybody sues and

you’re not supposed to be doing that.”

“Cajole! Cajole!” Trump exclaimed.

Have you ever seen a cat cajole?

Follow Maureen Dowd on Twitter.



A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 17, 2016, on page SR11 of the New York edition withthe headline: Reigning Cats and Dogs.



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18.01.2016

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