Time To Act On The Wall

 

The 15 February is rapidly approaching and I am fearing that Trump will find, well, some excuse to dilly-dally again.

Wonderful President that he has been until now, on the wall he is running out of excuses pretty fast. It is pretty clear that not only he has the power to declare an emergency to build the wall, but actually he could (at least until the money lasts) start building the wall without declaring any emergency. There are simply no excuses not to act.

I seem to understand what Trump has been trying to do.

1. He wants to send a message that he has tried all, but truly all, to make the Democrats reason, and he wants to expose them as enemies of the American people. This is possibly working, but at a price.
2. He is not disinclined to bring the phase of the ferocious confrontation nearer the 2020 election. This is, I think, unwise.
3. He wants to bend the Democrats to accept a compromise that he would be able to claim as a victory. This will, I think it is clear enough by now, never happen.

However, there are limits to how this can be made to work, and honestly I think it has not worked already. If he had declared the state of emergency in 2017, or at the very least after the compromise on the Omnibus, the wall would now be fairly advanced, with drone cameras able to make video ads for all of the campaign 2020. He might have been able to do (even) better in 2018, too. Yes, he would have been seen as “partisan”. Screw that. He was seen as partisan enough in 2016, without the bonus of being the sitting president, and see what he has accomplished from that much more difficult position.

Further shutdowns will not help him. A president that provokes another shutdown to obtain something for which he does not need any shutdown only damages himself. He needs to act and do what he has the power to do, taking all the responsibility as the Commander in Chief and the one responsible for the security of the American people.

Will he do it? We shall see. After two years of awaiting decisive action, I can’t be very optimistic on this.

M