Could This Be Trump's Waterloo?

Could This Be Trump’s Waterloo?    In my lifetime, I do not believe there has been a President enter into the office with more bipartisan and popular support than did Obama.  Democrats were united behind their candidate in a spectacular fashion; the public at large had pretty much bought into his “hope and change” mantra; and most all Americans were enthused that this nation had finally elected a person of color as President.  He had a colossal amount of political capital.    And what did Obama choose to do with his political capital?  Did he go for the low-hanging fruit where bipartisan support could be achieved?  Did he seize the opportunity to tackle some of the nagging issues that were confronting this nation and were begging for reform?  Did he decide to take advantage of his position and negotiate from a position of strength, handing out an olive branch or two to the opposition in the course of events?  No.  He chose to adhere to his rigid ideology and shove Obamacare down the throat of this country without a single Republican vote.  His desire for a single payer health care program blinded him to the fact that three-fourths of Obamacare could have been passed in a bipartisan way if some degree of respect and negotiation had occurred.  This choice to go “all or nothing” on Obamacare poisoned the partisan well in WDC and Obama never recovered from it.

I believe there were two watershed moments for Obama in his tenure.  The first was his ill-fated decision to jam Obamacare through Congress using extraordinary means.  The second was his last mid-term election battle with the Republicans.  Obama ran all over this nation preaching that even though he was not on the ballot, his policies were.  The American electorate soundly repudiated those policies by giving the Republican Party a majority in the House and the Senate.  Rather than accepting this unequivocal response from the people, Obama instead began his executive action orgy by announcing he would govern with his “pen and his phone”.   Americans do not elect kings; they elect chief executives.  They expect for the three branches of our government to work together, but independently.  Not only was Obama’s abuse of executive power a rebuke to the constitution, it was a foundation built upon the sand.   President Trump will now have the ability, and the apparent inclination, to easily dispose of Obama’s executive actions with his own pen.  Obama could have done what President Bill Clinton did before him: Understand the message from the voters and find a middle ground with the opposition party.  He chose otherwise.

If you think about it, there is one very significant parallel between Obama’s entry into the Presidency and that of Donald Trump.  Much like healthcare presented as a complex and emotional issue at the beginning of Obama’s first term, immigration reform is on the list of most people’s legislative agendas.  Both are extremely important issues that touch the lives of so many people and there are clearly at least two sides to every aspect of these issues.  There are many valid, sincere, and conflicting opinions about immigration reform.  If Trump is wise, he will slice off the border security section of immigration reform and focus his efforts on that particular area.  It is certainly possible that bi-partisan support combined with an incoming President’s honeymoon political capital should be sufficient to get an effective piece of border security legislation passed and approved.  The more complicated and divisive immigration reform can be studied, discussed, debated, and put off until a later date; a more deliberate approach.

If President Trump insists upon shoving immigration reform to the front his legislative agenda, he runs the very real risk of poisoning the partisan well much like Obama did with Obamacare.  Let us hope that he is student of history and chooses to instead focus on meaningful and practical legislative efforts upon which he can begin to build some degree of bipartisan chemistry.  It would be a tragedy in so many ways if immigration reform ends being Trump’s Waterloo, just as Obamacare was to Obama.