This was my last free New York Times article until next month. This copy & paste job is a conversation between two of my favorite New York Times columnists.

Gail Collins: Bret, I feel sort of obliged to ask you about the looming government shutdown. But I will totally forgive you if your eyes glaze over.

Bret Stephens: I think it’s safe to say that nobody ever tried “How do you feel about the looming government shutdown?” as a pickup line.

Gail: I dunno. In this administration it probably beats “Have you been subpoenaed yet?”

Bret: Ha. And the presidential adviser Stephen Miller does seem to imagine a government shutdown is some sort of aphrodisiac. It really takes someone with his special brand of charm to suppose that throwing hundreds of thousands of government employees out of work days before Christmas is going to be a political winner. And all for the sake of a border wall that Americans oppose 57 percent to 38 percent, according to one recent poll.

But I guess this tells us how Donald Trump intends to spend the next two years of his presidency, in full “Animal House” mode: that a “really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

Gail: Hey, this will probably be our last conversation until the new year. New Congress! How do you feel about the Dems taking over? I know anything that makes Trump unhappy tends to cheer you up, but this gang is also going to be raring to do something big on health care, more government support for college education, more environmental regulations and — you know, all my stuff.

You can’t be totally thrilled, can you?

Bret: The conservative in me is usually happy with divided government. To (over)generalize: A government that gets as little done as possible is what allows everyone else to get as much done as possible. Plus, I’m happy that the House Democrats will have subpoena powers to investigate Trump and make it much more difficult for him to quash whatever report Robert Mueller is preparing.

As for legislation, you know as well as I do that nothing House Democrats propose is going to make it past Mitch McConnell’s Senate. It works the other way around, too, obviously, if that’s any consolation. In the meantime, all they have to do is keep the government funded more or less while we start assessing the candidates. Speaking of which, how do you feel about Joe Biden? He already seems to be the front-runner, at least in Iowa.

Gail: Everybody talks about his age, which isn’t an overwhelming concern if you presume he’ll pick a very capable running mate. But the big worry, as our colleague Frank Bruni has pointed out, is that this is a guy who’s run for president before. A lot. And pretty much disastrously.

But everybody does like Biden, so that would certainly be a great change of pace. Do you have a Democratic favorite?

Bret: Er, Biden.

I thought Frank made a terrific case against Biden’s candidacy, with one quibble: Who else? Every other contender would need at least a year of on-the-job training, which is something the country and the world will scarcely be able to afford after four years of Trumpism.

Gail: Well, from my side there’s the memory of Barack Obama’s candidacy, coming out of just two years in the Senate.

Bret: Well, Obama was one of a kind. But his missteps also helped galvanize the Tea Party in 2009, a Republican House in 2010, a G.O.P. Senate in 2014, the collapse of the Democratic Party at the state level, and Trump after that. I see Biden as the Democratic answer to George H.W. Bush — a statesmanlike presence who could work with the opposition without rancor and leave the office and country better than he found it. It would be even better if Biden ran with a younger person, like Mitch Landrieu or Amy Klobuchar, with a promise to serve only four years and then make way.

Then again, I’m sure nothing endears me less to our liberal readers than me telling them who to nominate. Handicap the field for us. Warren? Harris? Booker? Beto?

Gail: No, no. It’s too early for picking favorites. The great thing is that you have a ton of people — almost all with at least Obama-level experience — who are going to have more than a year to run around the country and make their pitch. I want to relax and watch the show.

Speaking of relaxing, a lot of Republicans are retiring from the field, probably from Trump exhaustion. Biggest name is Paul Ryan, the House speaker, former vice-presidential nominee and in my experience the one lawmaker who smart, responsible conservatives always used to get gooey-eyed over.

He’s only 48 but just has “loser” written all over him. What ever happened to the guy who was going to pare down the deficit, enact compassionate conservative poverty programs and make government smart again?

Bret: History will remember Paul Ryan as the mouse that squealed.

You might say that Ryan was born a generation too late. He should have joined the House at the start of the Reagan era, when his brand of genial, wonky conservatism had an ally in the president. Instead, he made it to the summit of the Republican Party when the rank-and-file turned on everything he claimed to stand for.

That was his political tragedy. His political disgrace is that, when it happened, he hedged his bets. If he ever writes a memoir, it would be interesting to hear his rationalizations. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it? If not me, the other guys are worse? Hey, Trump might be a raging jerk and textbook racist, but why let something like that get in the way of historic corporate tax reform? I don’t know: Homo sapiensis usually at his most inventive when making excuses for himself.

Gail: I know you aren’t surprised that I was never a Ryan fan. But there is something attractive about the idea of a really committed fiscal conservative who’s willing to risk his or her popularity for the principle of balanced budgets. Instead you’ve got all these guys who howl about giving food stamps to the working poor and then happily ax a couple of trillion dollars from the national revenue.

Is there anybody out there you see replacing the imaginary principled-Paul Ryan shoes?

Bret: You’re asking the question as I’ve been reading a terrific new biography of Winston Churchill by the British historian Andrew Roberts. One of his most incisive points is that Churchill was able to lead Britain in the dark days of 1940 because he had been such a consistent critic of appeasement in the 1930s, when it made him so unpopular. He had credibility when the crisis came. Today, I don’t think there’s a single elected Republican who can say that.

I’ll admit I’ve got a soft spot for Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, because he’s smart and sane and clearly detests Trump. And Nikki Haley, the only person to inhabit, and leave, the Trump administration with honor and reputation intact. I’ve also always liked Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor who now leads Purdue. Otherwise, I’m increasingly of the view that, like the proverbial village in Vietnam, the Republican Party needs to be destroyed in order to be saved.

Gail: In the spirit of the holiday season let me be fair and admit I don’t see a whole lot of Winston-Churchill-caliber Democrats at the moment, either. But hope springs eternal.

Bret: Speaking of the holidays, you got a gift: Ryan Zinke resigned! What with Scott Pruitt gone and Jeff Sessions gone and Tom Price gone and Rex Tillerson gone and John Kelly going, it’s beginning to feel like, oh, a season of “The Apprentice.” Now there’s an idea bubbling that Trump himself might choose not to run in 2020, pre-empting defeat by claiming Mission Accomplished. Knowing what you do about the president’s character, do you think this is at all likely?

Gail: I might if he didn’t have to worry about being greeted on the way out of the White House door by 20 people bearing subpoenas.

Bret, we’re going to have so much action over the next year — the Mueller report, hearings by the House Democrats, and what to me is the real biggie, the investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York into Trump’s business practices. Plus, of course, the inevitable resignation of another dozen or so cabinet members. Can’t wait to converse about it all.

Meanwhile, have a happy new year. If you’re holding any parties, don’t invite Paul Ryan.

Bret: I won’t be inviting Ted Cruz, either. Happy sledding.