Up a creek

Last night’s presidential statement from the White House in defense of adding hundreds of miles to the existing wall along the border with Mexico fizzled. Trump hoped to excite the country in favor of declaring a national emergency. He failed because he used shopworn arguments that simply aren’t valid.

Trump is up a creek without a paddle. He has embarked on a partial government shutdown that cannot go on much longer without causing serious harm to his own fan clubs (especially in the agricultural sector) and to the country’s economy. Agricultural loans and subsidies need to be paid, food stamps that support agricultural prices need to be distributed, Federal courts need to remain open, data on the economy has to be collected, the weather bureau has to do its thing, and a thousand other services have to continue. Serious, unprecedented economic harm could result if the shutdown lasts another week.

The Democrats have remained solidly opposed to border wall funding, for good reasons: there is no evidence significant drugs or terrorists come across the border where there is no wall. When they come, it is mostly through the well-guarded ports of entry. There is no crisis at the border, where apprehensions are down over the past two decades and the numbers of ill children and other humanitarian cases are entirely manageable by a competent Administration. The Democrats see the wall for what Lindsey Graham said it was: a metaphor for border security (or maybe for stopping immigration entirely), but not a real factor in border security, which they have been willing to fund in substantial amounts.

Trump would do well to follow the well-worn path of Presidents who declare victory and retreat. It isn’t even hard: he can declare a national emergency and his intention to build the wall with Defense Department funds as well as announce that he will foil the Democratic plot to close the government by reopening those parts of it he deems vital to the American people. The wall won’t get built anytime soon, as he’ll be taken to court. Many of his ill-conceived initiatives languish there, but he’ll be able to get those parts of the government he likes operating again. Caveat emptor: my wife works at the Smithsonian, which however isn’t likely to be one of his priorities.

The Democrats, who are passing bills to reopen the government piece by piece, will object, but the debate would shift away from the foolishness of shutting down a large part of the US government to whether he can or cannot use Pentagon funding to build the border wall, which by now has become a glorified fence of steel slats because the Border Patrol has told Trump that his concrete wall would not be a good idea. They want to be able to see what is happening on the Mexican side.

I don’t know what the courts are likely to do with Trump’s national emergency scheme, if he pursues it. They are generally deferential to any president who declares what he is doing a matter of national security. Never mind that it isn’t.

When you are up a creek without a paddle, go with the current. The Democrats in the House are offering bills to reopen parts of the government. Trump would be smart to approve them, while declaring a national emergency that isn’t one.*

*PS: The list of “national emergencies” as of August 2017 suggests his won’t be the only national emergency that is not really a national emergency.