Why Donald Trump was irrelevant in the government shutdown talks
Washington (CNN)The big story coming out of the 2018 government shutdown was this: Where is President Donald Trump?
Trump
held no public events over the weekend, and while the White House
insisted he was aggressively working the phones, it didn't appear as
though the President -- the man who has touted himself as the greatest
deal-maker in world history -- was making much of a difference. (Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that he had not spoken with
Trump since their meeting on Friday afternoon; he also called Trump
"glaringly absent" in the negotiations.)
"I
just don't think it helps for him to be involved at all," Arizona
Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said of Trump on Sunday night. "The White
House really hasn't been involved from what I've seen."
There's
a simple reason for Trump's lack of active involvement: He doesn't
possess any sort of deep policy knowledge on this issue and he is
uninterested in educating himself on the finer points of the policy
debates at work in the shutdown in order to have any sort of real
influence over the way forward.
When
Trump has waded into this government funding/immigration fight, he's
managed to muddy the waters rather than make them clearer. His 55-minute public conversation
with Democratic and Republican lawmakers earlier this month suggested
he was very much open not only to a deal on DACA but a broader agreement
on comprehensive immigration reform. Forty-eight hours later, Trump was
angrily condemning plans to continue to allow immigrants from "shithole countries" into the US.
Last Friday, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer left his meeting with Trump,
he said he believed a deal to avoid a government shutdown was in the
offing. Within hours, he had been informed there would be no deal.
What
explains that lurching between deal and no deal? The obvious answer is
that Trump doesn't have a strong policy background on any issue other
than trade. As a result, he is hugely persuadable -- usually by
the last person who he talks to. So, what looks like a deal one minute
turns into no deal an hour later. And, because he lacks interest in the
policy nuance, misunderstandings abound as he agrees to things without
even knowing he is doing so. (Witness Trump's seeming acquiescence to a
"clean" DACA vote in that public meeting; House Majority Leader Kevin
McCarthy had to step in to make sure Trump didn't agree to something
without even realizing he was doing it.)
Because
of his unfamiliarity with details, Trump winds up being broadly
superfluous to the intricate sort of negotiations that wind up closing
the gaps between Republicans and Democrats -- or even between
Republicans and Republicans -- on major issues.
Remember
Trump's involvement in trying to win over wavering Republicans for his
hoped-for repeal of the Affordable Care Act? Time and time again, GOP
senators would emerge from meetings with Trump bewildered at his lack of
a grasp about the specifics of any sort of deal. Trump's pitch to these
lawmakers was of the 50,000-foot variety: Hey, we're all Republicans
and Obamacare is bad, right? There was very little engagement with
specific concerns about, say, Medicaid expansion dollars in their
states.
It all makes some sense
when you consider the role Trump played in his real estate ventures. He
was never the guy negotiating the nitty-gritty details. He was the guy
who came in the room at the end to close the deal by the sheer force of
his personality.
That's clearly the role Trump saw for himself in the these shutdown negotiations. This, from Kevin Liptak's terrific Trump piece over the weekend, is telling (bolding is mine):
"In
phone calls on Sunday, Trump encouraged Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Kevin
McCarthy, the No. 2 Republicans in the Senate and House, to reach an
agreement with Democrats. But as he did at the end of last week, he stressed they should come to him with a deal instead of offering his own ideas for a way out, according to a person familiar with the calls."
The
reason Trump didn't offer his ideas for a way out of the shutdown is
that he didn't have ideas for a way out of the shutdown. That, to his
mind, isn't really his job. He's the closer. He comes in, signs the
paper, shows everyone the signed paper and hands out the pen he used to
sign it to some lucky person. That's the job.
The
problem for Trump is that senators and House members don't have the
same reaction to him that many in the business world do. They are not
awed by being in his presence and, therefore, willing to do whatever his
people tell them to do. They have their own constituencies and their
own interests that exist entirely apart from Trump's charisma. (This is
especially true when Trump's approval ratings sit in the high 30s/very
low 40s.)
Trump was a bystander in
the government shutdown talks because he simply had very little to
offer. His lack of policy knowledge -- and his unstinting belief he
already knows everything he needs to know -- make him, the President of
the United States, largely irrelevant to the re-opening of the federal
government. Amazing.
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