Dreaming of a Deal

If President Trump can swing a deal to get Democrats to support a lot more funding for border security in exchange for belated legalization of the Obama “Dreamer” program, great.

Trump and most Republicans badly want the former. Trump, most Democrats and most Republicans want the latter. How is this a bad deal?

Yes, it’s possible for the president to give away too much. If Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi insist on, say, blanket grants of citizenship to the Dreamers, that’s a deal-breaker. Those negotiations probably have to come in (or after) a broader immigration-reform law.

But this is no reversal for Trump: Starting at the very least with his post-election “60 Minutes” interview, he’s been incredibly consistent in saying he wants to resolve the Dreamer issue with “heart.”

Yes, he recently announced he’s ending the Obama program in six months. But that’s because it’s blatantly unconstitutional, and a lawsuit asking the courts to say so was about to force his hand.

And no, it isn’t a betrayal to not insist on “wall” funding here: Everyone always understood that the point of The Wall is border security — which will include walls and fencing in some areas but was never intended to mean a US version of China’s Great Wall.

Trump is exploiting “resistance” Democrats’ obsession with fighting The Wall to get funds for the Border Patrol and so on: That’s a win. And it gets another issue out of the way so Congress can focus on tax reform to get the economy moving again, with the minority party possibly jolted out of the “obstruct everything” habit it’s been in all year.

Above all else, a good deal here is fully in keeping with what Trump’s core voters expect of him: problem-solving that’s neither politically correct nor ideological. If that offends those who thought they were “Trump’s intellectuals,” tough.