Having None of Having It All David Brooks: As opinionators, this is the late winter of our discontent. The world just hasn't thrown up that many topics to generate passionate debate. I'm not counting the new episodes of "The Bachelor." Gail Collins: David, do you find it strange that we live in a country where arranged marriages are regarded as unwise and antiquated, yet one of the longest running programs on television is about a bunch of young women who compete for the affection of a young man none of them had ever met before? A show where it is preordained that at the end of the season said bachelor will announce that he is in love with two of them and will need the full two-hour finale to choose his mate? But I suspect you were not actually inviting me into a serious discussion of reality television. You were talking about your discontent. Is this about President Obama or Congress or both? David: We're at the beginning of a presidential term, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like the seventh year of a presidency, not the start of the fifth. I suppose that's because the last three years have been composed of these endless and tiring budget fights. One year of budget fights feels like three years of normal time. Gail: Well, I can't argue with you about the budget fights. The problem is there's never any payoff, unless you count a continuing resolution as closure. "The Bachelor," on the other hand, always meets his deadlines. The latest one picked a vegan blogger from Seattle. David: Things have been especially hard on us non-female, non-Catholics. The two big discussable items these days are Sheryl Sandberg and the papal election. Gail: This is possibly the first time in my life that someone attempted to get the upper hand in a discussion by hinting that Catholic women have an unfair advantage. All those years of training at St. Antoninus elementary school have finally paid off. David: Somehow I feel I'm traipsing onto somebody else's turf if I wade into the Sandberg debate and start telling women they can't have it all. I say this even though I am rigorously consistent on this matter. The very definition of conservatism is: You can't have it all. No matter who you are, you can't have it all. The universe is specifically structured to prevent this. Still, this feels like an intra-female debate. Gail: If "having it all" means fame, fortune, happiness and perfect body tone, then obviously you're right. But when it comes to women, "having it all" has historically referred to being able to have both career and family. And if you define career as going for the top of your profession - C.E.O. or law firm partner or presidential candidate or whatever - it's still generally much harder for women to combine that with raising children. In college, the guys aren't worrying about whether they'll be able to pursue their career dreams and still have kids. So how do you give smart, accomplished, ambitious women the same opportunities as men to reach their goals? What about universal preschool and after-school programs? What about changing the corporate mind-set about the time commitment it takes to move up the ladder? What about having more husbands step up and take the major load? There are lots of potential answers, but after half a century of debate, we're still far from solutions. Just saying "you can't have it all" is like saying "there's no problem here." I can't buy that as long as the United States Senate is only 20 percent female and the group of Fortune 500 C.E.O."s is made up of only about 4 percent women C.E.O."s. David: I would only add from a neutral Swiss perspective that the whole Sandberg debate reminds me that while feminists have been rooting for female success for decades, many writers in that camp never seem to like specific females who are actually successful. Gail: David, I have been to 10 million gatherings of feminists celebrating successful women. Ten billion. This idea that women who make it are objects of scorn is totally crazy. There was a cover on Time this week with a picture of Sheryl Sandberg and the headline "Don't Hate Her Because She's Successful." That's ridiculous. You can criticize somebody's ideas without criticizing their achievements. David: The other thing I'd note is that there is no self-righteousness so virulent as the self-righteousness an upper-middle-class writer adopts to criticize the out-of-touchness of an upper class writer. The inability to afford a second home seems to be regarded by some people as a mark of their own God-like purity. Not that I'm interfering in this fracas. Not me. Strictly neutral. Gail: Someday perhaps there will be a fairer and more perfect world in which the media devotes more time to eviscerating the work of unsuccessful writers and the controversial ideas explored in their unpublished books. David: I also feel somewhat out of bounds interjecting myself in the race to be pope. I guess I don't want Catholics telling me who should be the next Sturgeon King. Gail: Well, I love an election, and if you want to give me odds on the next pope, I promise to develop an informed opinion on the sturgeon guy. David: My only position on this matter is that I am hoping that the bishops pick someone who can write good encyclicals. We've got thousands of institutions on this earth who regard the material world as all there is. The Catholic Church is one of the only self-confident institutions that regard this world as insufficient and that orients itself around another one. That naturally gives it a set of interesting perspectives, even though this can be hard for others to fathom and process. I once was watching Easter Mass from Rome on television. The pope (it was John Paul II) delivered his sermon, and then they cut away to the television reporter on the scene, who reported in disapproving tones, "He didn't really say anything new." I'm not sure novelty is the proper measure for Easter Mass. Gail: I have pretty much given up hope on getting a pope who will do something sensible about the church's longstanding nuttiness when it comes to matters of sex. I speak as a person who literally went to a school where the nuns told us we couldn't wear shiny shoes because they might reflect up our skirt. But there seem to be papal candidates who are capable of reminding the world about the side of Catholicism that celebrates voluntary poverty and service to the indigent. I'm rooting the cardinals find such a person. Maybe we won't get married priests, but at least we'd get a decent audit of the Vatican bank. David: I suppose the one new thing these days is the way President Obama is breaking bread with members of Congress (even Republicans!) while White House staffers tell reporters that the whole exercise is pretty much a waste of time. I know it will get me kicked out of the Court of the Knowing and the Cynical, but I actually think these meetings are terrific. I say that on pure epistemological grounds. Having sat in on many sessions with the president and many sessions with Congressional leadership, I'm always amazed by the misconceptions they have about one another. This face-to-face contact, at long last, won't eliminate the real disagreements, but they may reduce the utter falsehoods that are lodged stubbornly in their minds. Gail: When the president met with that handful of Republican senators for dinner, a participant estimated that he talked only about 10 percent of the time. This charm offensive may be less about a free exchange of ideas than just Barack Obama voluntarily submitting himself to dozens of mini-filibusters. I wish we had secret recordings. Maybe one of the networks could turn them into an exciting new series in which a lonely chief executive searches for a budget soul mate. The winner gets a rose and a large package of entitlement reforms.