The Son-in-Law Rises Again

The partial government shutdown is now in its 33rd day, and hundreds of thousands of government workers are going a third week without pay, with many of them calling in sick as a result, but the good news is that presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is bravely taking charge of the situation.

In case you’re unaware of the wunderkind’s remarkable resume, the heavily indebted real estate mogul has also been given responsibility for ending America’s opioid crisis and bringing peace to the Middle East and re-inventing the federal government, among other things. Although he doesn’t seem to have quite yet accomplished any of these Herculean tasks, he’s reportedly asserted himself into the shutdown negotiations, which look to be as intractable as any of his many other jobs. There’s much skepticism about his ability to pull any of it off, but the young fellow is apparently as self-confident as ever.

According to The Washington Post’s reporting Kushner is sure that the Democrats in congress will soon capitulate to President Donald Trump’s demand for five billion dollars or so of funding for the big and beautiful border wall that he promised his supporters, and that Trump’s smartest move is to remain obstinate in the demand. Kushner has a more impressive job description than we do, including the difficult task of being Trump’s son-in-law, but we nonetheless wonder where he gets such cockamamie ideas.

All of the public opinion polls show that a plurality of Americans don’t want a border wall, and a clear majority don’t think it justifies a partial government shutdown, and such veteran politicians and wily wheeler-dealers as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem to be enjoying the hit Trump has taken in polls. Trump is no longer making more than a token effort to argue that the Mexicans are eventually going to repay whatever money the Democrats might fork over, he’s now willing to let the Democrats call it something other than a big beautiful wall, and until the right wing provocateurs Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham spoke he was willing to capitulate on the whole idea, and for now he seems to have the far worse negotiating position. Several congressional Republicans are already planning to vote for a budget bill or continuing resolution to fully re-open the government that doesn’t include funding for the border wall, including all the congressmen who represent districts along the border.

There’s always a chance Trump’s rhetorical eloquence will persuade a majority of Americans that a big beautiful border wall is the most important issue facing the nation, perhaps when he delivers his State of the Union address in front of some raucous rally crowd in some deep-red state in the coming days, but so far that hasn’t happened. The president’s son-in-law reportedly played a role in getting the criminal justice reform bill passed, but that was a weak-on-crime bill that all the Democrats wanted and the likes of Limbaugh and Coulter and Ingraham didn’t talk about, and it doesn’t suggest he’s much a negotiator. Kushner is famous for rarely speaking in public, so it’s harder to assess his oratorical abilities, but based on what we have heard we don’t give him a better chance of swaying public opinion that his father-in-law. Our guess is he’ll be most useful to the president as an eventual scapegoat.

Meanwhile, Trump’s daughter-in-law is getting involved, and so far that’s not been helpful. Lara Trump, wife of the still-married Eric Trump, told a news outlet that those unpaid federal workers should “stay strong” and insist on a border wall before they get paid. The billionaire heiress said acknowledge that going weeks without a paycheck “is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of country, and their children and grandchildren and generations after will thank them for their sacrifice right now.” She’s more well spoken that her father-in-law and brother-in law, but we expect that even more unpaid government workers will be calling in sick today.

— Bud Norman

Pelosi Punches Back

One thing President Donald Trump’s die-hard fans always say in his defense is that “at least he fights,” which for both better and worse is undeniably true, but it should oblige them to admit that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pretty scrappy as well. The veteran political fighter’s latest jab is disinviting Trump to deliver his State of the Union address in the House of Representatives, arguing that the ongoing partial government shutdown makes it impossible to provide adequate security, and it looks to us like a very shrewd tactic.

The move is certain to infuriate Trump, who surely relishes all the pomp and circumstance and the interruption of regularly scheduled prime time television that a State of the Union address in the House chamber affords a president, and there doesn’t seem to be much he can do about. Even presidents can’t address the House chamber except at the invitation of the House, the concerns about security for the entire Congress and the Supreme Court and the President and all of his cabinet except for one “designated survivor” are quite plausible during this record-setting partial government shutdown, and both Trump and Pelosi can read the opinion polls showing most Americans blame Trump for the situation. The Constitution requires that president make an annual report to the Congress concerning the state of the union, but it doesn’t stipulate that the report be delivered in the House chamber, and Pelosi is quite right that Trump can provide a written report, as presidents routinely did until electronic media came along, or give a televised speech in the White House or anywhere else he might choose.

None of those options are quite so appealing to a reality show impresario such as Trump as a captive television audience watching his fellow Republicans cheer him and those damned Democrats disrespectfully declining to acknowledge his applause lines, but the only other option seems to be ending the partial government shutdown. Given the Democratic majority in the House and the majority of public opinion on its side, the prevailing political reality requires that Trump infuriate all his die-hard fans by dropping his demand for an unpopular wall along the entire southern border to do so, and that should prove even more intolerable than another of Trump’s low-energy teleprompter-ed and single camera Oval Office addresses. He might choose to deliver the State of the Union address in front of an enthusiastic rally of die-hard fans in those red “MAGA” caps chanting to lock up Pelosi, but we’re sure he’d rather not, as it doesn’t have the same dignity as those House chamber that presidents have come to expect.

Worse yet, it all signals anew that Pelosi is as always as willing to fight on all fronts just as down and dirty as Trump’s fans admire him for fighting, and once again suggests that she’s far better at it than such a relative political neophyte as Trump. As old-fashioned conservatives we still can’t stand the woman nor her team, as she’s not only the quintessentially stereotypical San Francisco liberal but also a literal one, yet from our seats on the political sidelines we have to admit she’s scarily good at the game. Trump still boasts of his tough negotiating tactics, but those were honed in the private sector where he frequently wound up bankrupt, and he’s currently up against someone more experienced in the more rules-based game of the public sector, and she clearly knows those rules better, and for now  she’s got public opinion on her side.

— Bud Norman