A fairly dramatic title to this post, I will admit, but I'll give it some forceful, but not hysterical perspective.
There is no doubt that conflicts already abound in the infancy of the era of Trump, and there will continue to the appearance of many for the next month and a half. However, as Robert Costa pointed out, President-elect Trump will first work to disentangle himself from any standing legal conflicts like Trump University settlement. Taking the new White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at his word, he said that there will be no violation of these [conflict of interest] rules, "I can assure you of that." This column will most certainly hold him to those words but I'm also willing to wait and see, actions matter. And President-elect Trump actions have so far been inadequate - meeting with his Indian business partners at this time is a complete conflict. Those meetings, according to the president-elect himself should be now conducted by his children who are supposed to be running his businesses. Divestment and blind trusts are a fantasy that Donald Trump will never fulfill, let's face it.
As Kathleen Parker explained, Donald Trump needs to give a speech about how he sees his presidency, addressing the concerns of many Americans, especially given the appalling poltical identity attacks he used during his campaign. He's already sewn cultural conflicts and is now not stemming the rapid growth of his business conflicts. If all of this isn't corrected by January 20, 2017, which I doubt will happen, a cloud will be cast over practically every decision the president makes, domestic or international one could ask how it could affect President Trump's business.
The reality of how this is going to play out is that there will so many of these little 'skirmishes' that the press will not know what to focus, on creating an overall cloud of conflict, but nothing that tips the balance. With Steve Bannon as chief strategist, one can presume that certain media outlets will comes to President Trump's defense. And columns such as this one will get bogged down in the minutia of every instance instead of bigger policy decisions.
On that note, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who knows Donald Trump better than any other U.S. senator, said that he would be willing to work with President Trump on trade and infrastructure but oppose him on policies like repealing the Affordable Care Act or civil liberties or Supreme Court picks, most importantly. This kind of balance will be criticized by the base of the Democratic party but from a pragmatic point of view, you have to do the best with the reality you're confronted with and so I can understand such a stance from someone in Senator Schumer's position, without diminishing the importance and necessity of the Democratic base to shout in the face of it as the cast of Hamilton has now famously done to Vice-President-elect Mike Pence. The comments of the cast were in bounds, as it were, but the timing was off the mark and shouldn't have been at the end of the show. But one has to keep in mind what the motivation was to do it, and that is to stand up to the bigotry that has been propagated during the Trump campaign.
But say that President Trump 'partners' with Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats on an infrastructure bill, but on the opposite side doesn't pay for it adequately to Tea Party Republicans' satisfaction. What happens then? Donald Trump already has a lot of Republican opposition in the Congress and this kind of example will only build on that.
This brings the question of whether the Democrats should work with the administration or oppose everything in every circumstance the way the Republicans did with President Obama? My initial thought is if you're the Democrats you need to take it on a policy by policy basis because if Democrats think they represent America better than Republicans they need to show people that they're not childish. Many times... countless, in fact, Republicans during President Obama's two terms showed themselves to be just that. We have to move away from that, but frankly, it's shitty (only way to capture it) that the Republicans in Congress can never come around on that idea.
Even Bernie Sanders seemed open to working with President Trump in areas where they shared common ground like instituting the Glass-Steagall Act once again, which would prohibit commercial banks from engaging in the investment business, and there's no doubt that would limit the consolidation of the big banks among other things.
But Robert Costa of The Washington Post said something that's sticking with me today - he said that if Democrats going along with Trump on policy items, he could destroy them as well. This is to say that if they compromise with Trump on anything then they've compromised their principles on everything and the party could break a part. It seems like an extreme conclusion, but let me remind you that Donald Trump is going to be the President of the United States (as difficult as that is to write).
Infrastructure, which no matter how you look it it would be a good compromise, will end up being the only area of agreement. Things like Glass-Steagall will never get to the floor of a Republican House. The one issue that is most troublesome is on climate change, as Bernie Sanders mentioned. Denial of it is completely idiotic at this point, and if appointments to the Dept. of Energy and Interior are anything like President-elect Trump's choices so far, we'll setting our country back in so many ways. Instead of denying climate change, use the Paris Agreement as a clarion call to America to lead the way, creating the technologies to combat the effects that the rest of the world will have to rely on. That's how America has always lead, and in this area it's how we should do it again.
Panel: Neera Tandem, Democratic Strategist; Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post; Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, Robert Costa, The Washington Post
A couple more things...
I can't believe I'm even saying this but I hope that Mitt Romney is offered the position of Secretary of State. John Bolton and especially Rudy Giuliani (in the top two for consideration) would each be a disaster. I rather see a sane person with a sense of responsibility than either one of those two, and then take bets on the over/under on whether Gov. Romney lasts the entire term.
If President-elect Trump were to calm my political nerves only slightly, it would be to dump Rudy Giuliani like he dumped Chris Christie. (How toxic is he now - soon to be impeached.)
Also, any tempered or pragmatic commentary I offer that may infuriate you either way, I will make clear, if I haven't already in this column, that it can not be overstated what Bernie Sanders said with regard to President-elect Trump and the birther issue. In fact, I would say that it's not an issue but a smear and a completely racist one at that. There's not a word that I write about Donald Trump where the depth of how despicable that he would use a racist conspiracy as the impetus to run for president. There's no giving him a pass on this. I could make it an editor's note at the bottom of every column, but saying it here once, clearly, is enough.
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