The Presidency vs. Congressional Republicans

We have a surprising situation today. It wasn't so surprising when the Congressional Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House of Representatives, decided to oppose President Obama and prevent as much legislative movement as they could. But, today they are opposing almost everything President Trump proposes. This and the occasional chaos in the White House and the Election/Russian Investigation have made our government a mess.

It was clear during the presidential primaries that many of the Republican politicians and big-wigs didn't like Donald Trump (the same was true of the Democrats of course), but for them to oppose a sitting Republican President is unusual and shocking. They have managed to work on healthcare reform and produce nothing (again Democrats are happy with that) and they have failed to take up infrastructure spending in a serious way (that may be Trump's fault for not negotiating properly) and they say they're working on tax reform, but it's not yet clear they can really manage that either. They should have had infrastructure legislation ready to go by March 2017, but now it's September and there is nothing except a dollar amount ($50-$60 Billion / year for 10 years with an option to renew or to establish an infrastructure bank). If they had been efficient they would already have budget/spending ready, but it may not be until December. In short, the legislative process is very very slow. America moves very very fast, so this is not a good match.

My advice to the president is to match some of what Pres. Obama did: focus on providing a general direction for legislative efforts and then let the spotlight fall on Congressional Republicans and their work or inability to deliver AND for the president to put most of his attention on staying connected with "The People" while working on foreign affairs. I don't know if that advice is 100% perfect for these times, but it may be the best we can manage today. There is also (unfortunately) plenty to do and say about disaster relief. In Houston and Florida they had hurricanes of unusually large magnitude and in the Great West there are fires and fires. We need to discuss these problems and how we can work to survive them better in the future. Some Republicans won't like discussing hurricanes because of the Climate Change issue, but on a strictly disaster-based reasoning we still have problems paying for repairs and recovery from these disasters. It would help if our government were better capable of helping people. It wouldn't hurt to also put a focus on Congress and it's (sometimes) inability to speedily pass recovery legislation. It has gotten too political.

This isn't the most hopeful blog post I've written, but I think it's realistic until the political picture of the American electorate changes.