TEXAS VIEW: If Trump wants a wall, he needs to show the art of persuasion

One of the characteristics attributed to our president is an uncanny ability to navigate his way through tough negotiations to strike that brilliant deal that would have eluded anyone else.
This is the aspect of his leadership that led Donald Trump to proclaim during his presidential campaign that “I alone” can fix the mess in Washington. And this is the aspect of his leadership style that the president hopes people take away from The Art of the Deal, his best-selling memoir and novel approach to business. He may upend everything, but, we are to believe, he will emerge in the end with a better deal in hand than anyone thought possible.
This implicit promise — that he knows what he is doing, even if amid all the chaos outsiders struggle to discern how he will actually improve whatever he is torching — is one reason why Trump’s core supporters tenaciously stick with him. But there is an aspect of this approach that is both fundamental and flawed in a democratic system.
What may be successful in a business environment where the aim is personal enrichment fails as a strategy to govern. In a system of government that relies on buy-in from the electorate in order to enact and ingrain change that can improve lives in the long term, what is needed is a leader who is skilled at the art of persuasion.
We don’t pretend to believe that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are persuadable on most issues. Their aim is to return their party to control of the White House and both houses of Congress and therefore the national agenda in two years. But then the purpose of Trump’s Oval Office address — his first — never should have been to directly win over the Democrats he is now locked in a power struggle with in Washington.
Instead, his opportunity was to speak directly to the American people and rally support to resolve one of the toughest and longest standing political fights of our day: what the national policy should be in regard to immigration and illegal migration. And for that, this president needs to do something he heretofore has not done: expand the number of people who support his approach, who can accept his solution to a pressing national problem.
After watching the president speak on Tuesday night, and anticipating his trip to the U.S. border with Mexico this week, we can’t help but conclude that he recognizes the need to win people over. But as the government rolls through a prolonged partial shutdown, it is also hard to escape another conclusion. The president has drawn a line upon which he intends, to borrow a line from a very different context, to “fight over all summer,” if necessary. This battle — the one over funding the government vs. funding construction of a border barrier (otherwise known as “the wall”) — is a central struggle of the Trump presidency that cuts to the core of who we are as a people and whether we take to heart deep-seated concerns held by people across the spectrum of this fight.
The president has teed up concerns over crime, and those concerns are valid. Each time there is a story involving an American who is killed or injured by a person in the country illegally, concerns over crime will only intensify. And with millions of people in the country illegally, there will always be a fresh example. At the same time, how we treat children swept up in this fight, how we handle individual people who are seeking a better life for themselves and, by doing so enrich the fabric of our society, remains a critical issue about who we are as a people.
The president has teed this fight up. Is he now the person who has the moral credibility to win enough trust across the spectrum to strike a bargain that advances security while at the same time securing foundational beliefs of what American society should be? His approach up to this point forces us to conclude he hasn’t. He has left himself in a position where it is impossible to advance his plans. We hope he pivots now and offers a deal involving securing the permanent legal status for children who entered the country illegally in exchange for more miles of barrier built along the southern border.
That would end the immediate fight in Washington. But to resolve the debate in this country over immigration, we need a leader who amasses credibility on controlling crime while not exaggerating dangers, a leader who recognizes the great contribution made by people who seek a better life in America and thereby has the willingness to create an immigration system that allows for legal immigration at levels that undercut illegal border crossings while bolstering our economy.
The art of that deal will turn on the art of persuading the country to advance on two fronts at once.