Can president, Democrats solve problems together?
Did anyone expect at least a hint of humility from President Donald Trump after Democrats won control of the House of Representatives? If so, they don’t know our transactional president.
Almost lost in his occasionally hostile exchanges with reporters Wednesday at his first news conference after the midterms was the olive branch he offered to House Democratic leaders.
“In all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats,” he tweeted that morning. “If they give her a hard time, perhaps we will add some Republican votes. She has earned this great honor!”
What? No more “High Tax, High Crime” and “MS13-loving Nancy”? Those were the sorts of nicknames he attached to her in rally speeches.
Could this be Trump humor? Or sarcasm? It’s hard to tell.
He insisted at his raucous Wednesday press conference. His support was sincere. “She worked hard for it,” Trump said.
Perhaps the president’s mood shift also has something to do with another of his favorite Democratic targets, Rep. Maxine Waters of California.
On the campaign trail, Trump sounded alarms that “Crazy Maxine” or “Low-IQ Maxine” would be “put in charge of our country’s finances” if the Democrats won the House. There was more than a little Trumpian exaggeration in that statement, but Waters is the senior Democrat on the House committee that oversees financial regulation and housing finance reform. More pressing for Trump, perhaps, is the subpoena power her chairmanship would give her, which could ruin the days of Trump and his associates.
With that in mind, Trump did show a little bit of dagger beneath his love bouquet. Should Democrats decide to tie up Congress with investigations of Team Trump, he said, he is ready to work with Senate Republicans to investigate alleged leaks of classified documents and other issues among the Dems.
Message: Just play along, folks, and nobody gets hurt.
Here we see Trump as the Transactional President, the former Democrat and real estate developer whose ideology is best summed up as “Let’s make a deal.”
His lack of firm ideological beliefs has freed him to give the customer what he or she wants. He has won more than 80 percent support from self-identified evangelical Christians for his conservative judicial appointments despite his reputation for having violated an eye-popping number of the Ten Commandments.
One presumes there also are tantalizing possibilities for reforms to save insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, for people with pre-existing conditions. Focusing on that issue at Pelosi’s insistence provided so much high-octane power to Democratic congressional campaigns that Trump and other Republicans began to claim they were the true champions for saving the coverage, even after they voted repeatedly to abolish Obamacare or gradually defund it.
So far, no other House Democrat has come close to matching Pelosi’s ability to raise campaign dollars for House Dems or navigate legislation. The party does need to develop new talent at the state and local level. But for now, Pelosi is well-prepared for what she, too, has called a “transition” period to her party’s full recovery.
Voters want to see real problem-solving through compromise. Now is the time for President Trump and his adversaries to show they can make that work.