In this issue
Even at its peak, Congress is hardly a paragon of competence and moral clarity. But it’s been especially scandal-prone in recent years, thanks largely to the MAGA members who’ve ridden in with President Donald Trump since his first term in 2016.
Remember Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz? He resigned just days before the House Ethics Committee was set to release a report on allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old. (He then enjoyed a very brief tenure as Trump’s pick for Attorney General before the scandals forced his withdrawal.)
Or how about former North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorne? His resume of wrongdoing included alleged gun violations, insider trading, sexual harassment, and lying about his college acceptances (not to mention a hint of white nationalism).
No wonder then that just 16 percent of Americans approve of Congress’s performance, according to Gallup’s latest numbers, and only 4 percent have a “great deal” of confidence in the institution. In the same way that a dish is only as good as its ingredients, Congress is only as good as its members. Unfortunately, MAGA’s contributions to the Congressional stew are like the legislative equivalent of cyclospora.
“Candidate quality” continues to be a problem for the GOP this cycle, as Monthly Editor Nate Weisberg discovered while compiling his list of the 10 worst candidates running in November. Some of them even make Gaetz and Cawthorne seem like choirboys in comparison. If Democrats succeed in winning big in this year’s midterms, it’ll be in part because voters are fed up with candidates whose primary qualification is loyalty to Trump, integrity and competence be damned.
For this week’s interview (a preview of this week’s podcast), Nate and I counted down the top five worst candidates up for election—or re-election—this year. We also talk about some of the best.
See if your pick for number one is the same as ours.
College or apprenticeship? Why not both? Most people think of apprenticeship as an “alternative” path for young adults who choose not to enroll in college. But as PPI’s Bruno Manno reports, “apprenticeship degrees”—which combine both practical training with a diploma—are increasingly coming into vogue. They’re a tidy solution for the lack of parity between technical and academic education. And as Bruno argues, they could prove an effective remedy for ensuring that more young adults find a pathway from high school to higher education and career. Learn more about this model here.
The normalization of hate. It wasn’t that long ago that an accusation of Nazism was among the gravest of offenses. Now it earns at most a shrug for many Americans, and is even a point of pride for many in the MAGA fringe. “The neo-Nazis have seen their terminology enter the national vocabulary,” writes David Masciotra. “Their language and influence are visible everywhere, poisoning debate and turning generations of young men into vessels of cruelty, paranoia, and prejudice.” David argues that this fall’s midterms offer Americans an opportunity to reject the nation’s descent into hate. Read here.
Rising odds for a blue Senate. “Democrats can trace multiple paths to Senate control, even in some of the reddest turf in the country, because many of their candidates are performing better than a generic candidate would,” writes Politics Editor Bill Scher. Candidates are wildly over-performing in places like Arkansas and South Dakota (though Democratic victories are still unlikely), and within striking distance of winning in places like Kansas. A surprise upset could even out the map in places where Democrats aren’t performing as well as they should (here’s looking at you, Michigan). Read Bill’s full analysis here.
City of rage. Paris-based Features Editor Gillen Tener Martin has witnessed firsthand the convulsions that have overtaken her adopted city in the past week. Living in the epicenter of the violence, and watching as beloved places in her neighborhood were vandalized or destroyed, left her with questions: “Where were the police who had tear-gassed peaceful protesters near our apartment when stores on our street were being looted?” she asks. Gillen also shares an astonishing set of photos in her piece. Read here.
Plus…
Regular readers of the Washington Monthly may have noticed that we have a new look. We’ve adopted a warmer palette, modernized fonts, and switched up the layout. We’ve made the College Guide pages more interactive and user-friendly. We hope the site is easier to read and to navigate.
Ten years ago, making these changes would have cost tens of thousands of dollars—and in fact, it did. The Monthly’s web presence started out as a blog on Movable Type (check out an example on the Wayback Machine here), and the migration to WordPress took many months, many meetings, and hundreds of hours from designers and developers.
The Monthly’s new look took me literally one weekend to build—and a $20 subscription to Claude Pro.
This experience has made me both more ambivalent and more optimistic about AI. On the one hand, AI put a reasonably decent looking website within the reach of a nonprofit magazine with a tiny budget. I also learned a lot about coding, web design, and project management. To get everyone’s input on proposed changes, for instance, I asked Claude to build a wireframe with toggles that would allow people to try out different options for fonts, palettes, and layouts. This was a huge improvement over the bad old days of emailing PDFs of sample layouts and fonts (which invariably resulted in someone working off of old emails and drafts, thereby requiring additional meetings to sort out).
On the other hand, I’m sure there are web designers, coders, and developers across the country panicking because of people like me. AI has made them obsolete. Maybe.
I’ve read a lot in recent months about the potential of AI to supplement human capacity, and I think I finally understand what that means. Claude didn’t build the site for me (as much as I wanted it to). It answered my questions and told me what to do. It also screwed up a lot and sometimes gave me bad advice. It was bright but dumb and needed adult supervision. (But unlike many humans, it also happily admitted mistakes—“You’re right!” it said on numerous occasions after I pointed out an error.)
And as much as I’ve grown from this adventure, I know that I’m no danger to real tech professionals. Because let’s face it: A publication site is fairly basic, in the grand scheme of things. Even with Claude’s help, I wouldn’t know how to build a complex database, combat cybercriminals, or build anything visually more sophisticated than the Monthly’s College Rankings. Claude and I together could never replace a computer scientist or a professional developer. I’m moreover certain that an experienced developer working with Claude could have come up with a site far superior than what I cobbled together.
What I did build was what an “entry-level” developer could have done, and those are the positions most at risk from AI, as research now shows. AI has upped the skill level that people need for jobs, and it’s robbing young people of the opportunity to work on projects like mine.
I don’t know the answer to this problem, but I suspect the goals of K-12 and higher education will have to change drastically over the next few years. AI gave me the knowledge to carry out the redesign of the Monthly’s site, but it didn’t provide the skills necessary to initiate the project in the first place, build internal consensus, and then see it through. Those are the human skills AI cannot replace and that tomorrow’s workers are going to need.
Thanks for reading and have a great week!
Anne Kim, Senior Editor
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