‘The Harvey Effect’

There is a disconnect deep within the brain of President Trump. Yes, we know that’s not stop-the-presses news. But this one, coming as it does, in the midst of a massive relief effort in hurricane-ravaged Texas is monumentally inexplicable.

Last week Trump threatened a government shutdown if Congress didn’t approve funds for his border wall with Mexico. As recently as Monday afternoon — with the flood waters still rising around Houston — he insisted that he hoped a shutdown wouldn’t be necessary but added, “if it’s necessary we’ll have to see.”

Congress returns to work next week faced with a Sept. 30 deadline to raise the debt ceiling, pass at least a stop-gap appropriations bill and reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program.

What Hurricane Harvey has made all too obvious is that in a crisis of this magnitude politicians at all levels and of all political stripes look to what the federal government can do — on the ground and in a hurry. In that context even those who have long disparaged federal bureaucrats realize that it is those very same bureaucrats who will be called on to throw a lifeline to the people whose lives have been turned upside down by Harvey.

And during his visit yesterday Trump, while noting it was too early for congratulations added, “We want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at in five years, in ten years from now as, this is the way to do it.”

But we also know that as traumatic as these days are for the people of Texas and now Louisiana, as dramatic as the rescue efforts are, this is merely the beginning of months, possibly growing into years of recovery and rebuilding. That in the days ahead Texas will need not some newly installed border wall but large infusions of federal cash for infrastructure repair, for school rebuilding, and to help restore the lives of those many ordinary people Trump purported during the campaign to care about so dearly.

Yesterday in Annaville with U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn at his side Trump promised a small crowd that had gathered, “We love you, you are special, we are here to take care of you.”

So about that government shutdown . . . ?

Or will “the Harvey effect” be what saves Trump from his own worst instincts?