Opinion: Trump was right to walk away from Democrats on infrastructure
President Trump during a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday. By Henry Olsen Henry Olsen Columnist focusing on politics, populism, and American conservative thought Email Bio Follow Columnist May 23 at 5:10 PM Negotiations over a big infrastructure bill hit a huge pothole on Wednesday. President Trump’s declaration that the Democrats have to choose between “infrastructure or investigations” struck many observers as petty and foolish.
But by pursuing bipartisan compromise simultaneously, they are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. On the one hand, House Democrats largely brand Trump as ethically and intellectually unfit for office and accuse him of having engaged in a “coverup.” On the other hand, they march to the White House and insist that he work with them on potentially shared objectives.
Instead, he should keep a laser-like focus on the American swing voter. That person is the person who tells pollsters they don’t approve of his job performance overall, but do approve of his performance on the economy and disapprove of impeachment. That group is small — averaging about 5 percent of registered voters in the polls — but it’s the group that will determine who wins in 2020.
Democrats will surely howl that this is unfair, pointing to the Republican investigations into the Obama administration’s actions concerning the Benghazi attack and the Fast and Furious operation. But those investigations were substantively different than these. Those investigations were looking at decisions and actions by the president’s team in the conduct of their public duties. The current investigations have nothing to do with running the country.
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