With the partial shutdown of the federal government now temporarily resolved, was what happened during the past several weeks even remotely close to providing the American people with the government they deserve?
The president — not exactly your traditional optimist — expressed doubt that Congress will offer a deal on border security he will accept.
Meanwhile, an ad hoc committee — this time a bipartisan gaggle of 17 members of the House and Senate — will work together to hammer out the details of a possible compromise.
The process seems unlikely to stumble upon the magical ordering of details to resolve the governing stalemate that descended upon the nation’s capital.
The truth is that even while federal workers throughout the country headed back to work, the government in Washington isn’t functioning. At least it’s not functional in any rational sense of that word.
One example: According to the Congressional Budget Office, the shutdown cost the economy about $3 billion. That’s not exactly the difference between what President Donald Trump wanted for the border wall ($5.7 billion) and what the opposition party supported in the past ($1.4 billion), but it’s not that far off either.
Things are seriously broken in Washington when, two years into an administration, large numbers of senior positions are unfilled, when basic functions such as funding day-to-day operations of the government are beyond our lawmakers’ abilities and when at any given moment it is reasonable for us to fear that federal workers performing basic services, such as air traffic controllers, won’t be fully staffed.
The government is involved in many activities it performs poorly or shouldn’t perform at all. But government should be boring, not chaotic. Federal agencies need to be stable, competent and plainly routine.
And here is one nexus point where the president is making a miscalculation and doing us, the people living outside of the Beltway, a disservice.
After the financial crisis and nearly a decade of slow if not stagnant economic growth, it was probably inevitable that the federal government would undergo a thorough shakeup.
But the point of such a shakeup is to make the government more functional, more responsive to the needs of the citizenry and more respectful of the very people it seeks to govern.
Nothing about this era indicates any of those things are happening.
The president’s miscalculation is that a coalition of voters large enough to enable him to govern will stick with him regardless of the amount of uncertainty, chaos or destruction he causes.
Trump was handed a once-in-a-generation opportunity when he won the White House.
All of his political capital rested on support for sweeping in real change. The catch was that the change had to meaningfully improve things.
It’s clear the administration has forced a rethink on a lot of fronts, but it is equally clear the administration isn’t leaving the country with a clearer sense of direction.
We deserve more.
And at some point, the leader who discards partisan warfare in favor of shaking Washington back into functional behavior will emerge on top.
— The Dallas Morning News