There's no question as to the mirth of yesterday's arms deal: Democrats' sale of a dagger to Trump, with which he "blindsid[ed and backstabbed] his own Republican allies," chortles the NY Times. "Trump sides with Democrats on fiscal issues," snickers WaPo, "throwing Republican plans into chaos." Politico giggles that the GOP is "livid after Trump cuts deal with Democrats," and the Atlantic chuckles about "the surprising blow" of "Trump's Early Christmas Gift to Democrats."
Similar headlines elsewhere bring equal merriment.
And I have grown to loathe them.
It is of course vastly rewarding that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's Trumpian démarche of temporary fixes bitterly angered Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, both of whom desperately desired a prolonged debt-ceiling lift (among other fiscal objectives), so as to avert the gruesome alternative of jackhammering displays of GOP ineptitude on necessary credit-line votes.
Trump, being the Chauncey Gardiner and disastrous partisan dealmaker that he is, possessed absolutely no idea of what he had done. "I think the deal will be very good," he giddily told reporters on Air Force One, as his own party seethed. Democrats were to Trump as Ribbentrop was to Molotov, 1939. ("A three-month debt ceiling? Why not do a daily debt ceiling?" quipped Idaho's Republican congressman Mike Simpson to Politico. "He’s the best dealmaker ever. Don’t you know? I mean, he's got a book out!")
And yet as rewarding and entertaining as all this is, there's a downside: Once again, Democrats pulled Republicans from the flaming seeds of their own destruction.
There was no guarantee that the GOP would have secured a long-term debt-ceiling lift or averted a government shutdown; both immense public embarrassments might well have awaited the party as the month of September closed out. The GOP might have, and probably would have, stumbled from one fiscal calamity to the next. Now, September will seamlessly meld into autumn, and just as likely autumn into winter, absent Republican meltdowns. Government will go on, crises will be avoided, and Trump and the GOP — not Democrats — will get the credit from the only somewhat attentive electorate.
I'd prefer to see Democrats sit back, acknowledge and accept that congressional Republicans are in the majority and in charge. Governance is not the responsibility of minority Democrats; they owe no more conscientiousness to Republicans than the latter ever granted the former, 2009-2010. In other words, I'd prefer to see Dems let Republicans make a unilateral hash of things — time and again, over and over, week after week, arm in arm with their idiot president — from now till Election Days, 2018 and 2020. Let us all witness the full bloom of Republican incompetence, which, regrettably, will always be obscured by any Democratic dutifulness.