The Jell-O President and the shutdown

On Monday the Senate voted 81 to 18 and the House 266 to 150 to reopen the federal government and fund it through Feb. 8, as well as to stop holding hostage the health care of almost nine million poor kids – and not a moment too soon. Shutdowns may make good partisan theater, but they don’t make any winners.

Now perhaps Congress will finally get around to taking up a bill to protect the nearly 700,000 so-called Dreamers, immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children – legislation that almost nine in 10 Americans support.

That, at least, was the offer the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, made in order to break the stalemate. It wasn’t an ironclad promise, of course, and given Mr. McConnell’s record, it’s fair of many Democrats and other people of good faith to question his word.

Nonetheless, the spotlight is now where it should be: on the failure of President Trump and Republicans in Congress to take care of the Dreamers, despite their repeated claims that they want to.

Mr. Trump has sent wildly contradictory messages. The Dreamers, he said last February, are “absolutely incredible kids” who deserve to be treated “with heart.” And yet, in September he created this problem by ordering an end to the program if Congress didn’t find a permanent fix by March 5. Two weeks ago he promised to deliver them a “bill of love.” But two days later he rejected a bipartisan deal to that end. On Friday, hours before the shutdown deadline, Mr. Trump reportedly reached an agreement with the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, which would have protected Dreamers and increased border security, but he then reversed course at the urging of the anti-immigrant hawks who circle the Oval Office – mainly his chief of staff, John Kelly, and senior adviser, Stephen Miller. On Sunday, the president unleashed his inner Mr. Miller and attacked Democrats who, he said, “just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked.”

So what does this White House want? No one seems to know, including Mr. Trump himself. Mr. Schumer said dealing with the president is “like negotiating with Jell-O.” And that was a key factor precipitating the weekend’s shutdown. One Republican strategist said Mr. Trump’s lack of any clear convictions, combined with his ignorance of basic policy matters, “emboldens all parties to take positions that they won’t compromise.”

Contrast this with what happened in 2013, when Republican hard-liners shut down the government after President Barack Obama refused to give in to their demand to defund the Affordable Care Act, his signature legislative achievement. Mr. Obama, who was clear from the start that he would not negotiate on that point and stood his ground, eventually prevailed.

In 2018, the White House is occupied by a man with no evident principles beyond promoting his own brand and chalking up “wins,” however he might define them. He’s so uninterested in the particulars of governing that he recently told lawmakers that he would sign whatever immigration bill they sent him. How do you negotiate with a chief executive who doesn’t know what a good deal is?

The other stumbling block is more familiar: an anti-immigrant faction of congressional Republicans that has scuttled immigration reform for nearly two decades even as it falls further out of step with public sentiment. There’s good reason to worry that this will be no different in three weeks; whatever the Senate might agree on, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, has not committed to bringing a bill to the floor.

The nation is stuck with a party that controls the entire federal government even though its agenda is deeply unpopular with the American people. Yet even that is an obstacle that could be overcome – if the president had any aptitude for leadership.