Trump’s televised spat was entertaining, but a poor representation of democracy – Washington Examiner

President Trump faced off against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in the Oval Office on Tuesday, pledging to shut down the government over money for his border wall. By publicly and with great drama drawing a line in the sand between the option of a government shutdown or funding the wall, he put on display the antithesis of the fundamental idea of democracy — that people with different ideas can compromise and reach pragmatic policy decisions.

On border security, it is not dug-in disputes but discussions marked by compromise that are needed to move beyond entrenched rhetoric of “Abolish ICE” and “Build the wall,” neither of which well serve the long-term interests of the country. Indeed, when Trump put the question of the importance of border security to Nancy Pelosi, she agreed. Of course it is important.

That should have been the starting point for conversation. Instead, Trump hammered away at the border wall, refusing to acknowledge that anything short of providing the $25 billion he wants to build his wall could qualify as taking border control and immigration seriously.

Trump himself has offered a better model of negotiations. In January he hosted a bipartisan round table on immigration that demonstrated the potential of sitting down with the goal of listening to each other and actually reaching an agreement, or at least making progress toward one.

But on Tuesday, the rhetoric was entirely different. Trump ended the live debate with a threat, telling the press and the Democratic leaders, “If we don’t get what we want, one way or the other. … I will shut down the government, and I am proud. I am proud to shut down the government for border security.”

The president would rather shrug off the responsibility of governing. Never mind that Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate — he’d rather shut the government down than work for a solution to the real problems of illegal immigration and national security.

For those in the U.S., that might not seem so terrible. Sure, shuttering the government for even a few days costs billions of dollars and more in economic loss, but in the end it’s a political chip that has little impact beyond those employed by the federal government.

Outside of our borders, however, the consequences of Tuesday’s display of a failure to work together offer an image, broadcast in real time, that shows the breakdown of democracy. Instead of the rosy description of compromise and elective governance depicted in U.S. explanations of our system, the president left no room for nuance, refused to address legitimate disagreements, and promised to hurt to the country with the economic loss of a shutdown to get his way. It had little to do with policymaking or governing and everything to do with landing a few prime-time jabs.

For democracy, increasingly embattled in Eastern Europe and undermined around the world, this is not a reassuring example that elected representatives with different ideas can govern the country.

The American spectacle, as entertaining as such spats may be, does not bolster the idea of democracy as a stable form of government poised to pragmatically address real issues. That is a weakness that China is all too happy to capitalize on — offering, in place of elections, a version of its own model of one party rule and state led development with stability that must seem attractive to some, at least compared with Washington.