Give The Man A Chance
By: LeRoy Goldman
BlueRidgeNow Online
January 21, 2018
“Give
the man a chance” is one of the most impactful lines uttered by Dr. Jack Ryan
in the taut thriller “The Hunt for Red October” about a Soviet, first-strike
nuclear submarine.
Ryan,
the film’s protagonist, believes the captain of the Red October, Marko Ramius,
intends to defect and hand the Red October over to the Americans.
Ryan
attempts, but initially fails, to persuade the skipper of an American attack
submarine, the Dallas, that Ramius intends to defect. Dallas’ skipper, Bart
Mancuso, has been ordered to destroy the Red October.
Suffice
to say, fate intervenes and Mancuso realizes Ryan may have it right. Ryan
confronts him and says, “Give the man a chance.”
That’s
what President Donald Trump deserves, and too frequently the press denies him
that chance.
Let’s
start where we all agree. The federal government is hopelessly broken. That has
been the case for the better part of a quarter-century, and it makes no
difference which political party rules the roost inside the Washington Beltway.
The
underlying cause of Washington’s dysfunction resides not within the Beltway but
here in the heartland of the nation. That’s where you find the growing legions
of radicals of the left and right who share the same ideological fervor — take
no prisoners.
Their
fanaticism has turned compromise into a dirty word. To these radicals,
compromise and surrender are synonyms. Thus, none of us should be surprised
that Congress and the president apparently cannot agree on a 2018 budget,
cannot agree on what to do about DACA and broader immigration reform, cannot
agree on the necessity to raise the national debt limit, or any other issue of
legislative significance.
It
was in this hyper-partisan context that President Trump did something
extraordinary in a meeting with congressional leaders on Jan. 9. Typically the
press is invited into such a meeting for only a few minutes at the beginning.
But not this time. The president allowed the press to remain and the cameras to
roll for about an hour.
We
got to see the back and forth on a complex and controversial subject, DACA and
immigration. We saw a president who was clearly in charge of the meeting, who
repeatedly emphasized that the issue could only be resolved by compromise, who
said he was willing to support a substantive agreement on both DACA and broader
immigration, and who said he was “prepared to take the heat” that would
inevitably attend any such agreement, including his willingness to allow
natural terrain be the wall where possible.
However,
during the meeting, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked the
president if he would support a “clean” DACA bill. To Feinstein and other
Capitol Hill veterans, a “clean” bill meant one without any other provisions,
such as enhanced border security that she and everybody else knew was essential
to the president and the GOP.
Thus
the ever wily Feinstein’s question was a ploy designed to see if she could
entrap President Trump. He, not being familiar with the term “clean” bill,
responded affirmatively — until it quickly became clear what Feinstein was up
to. At that point, the president put the meeting back on its bipartisan
trajectory.
But
rather than the ensuing press coverage of the meeting being focused on the
growing bipartisan accord the president had so carefully and skillfully tried
to cultivate during the meeting, the press chose to hammer him for his
vacillation and ignorance.
For
example, Cristiano Lima writing in Politico stated, “Trump’s meeting with
lawmakers was marked by shifting policy stances from the president … .”
In
the Washington Post, Ed O’Keefe and David Nakamura wrote that “Trump appeared
to contradict himself” and that “Trump seemed to indicate he would support a
proposal from Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) for a ‘clean DACA bill’ … only to
be quickly corrected by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)”.
And
Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker in the Washington Post wrote that “he also
muddled through the policy by seeming to endorse divergent positions … .”
Give
me a break! Instead of the mainstream press reporting on what was a clearly
successful, presidentially led effort, to find common ground and to take the
heat on the contentious issues of DACA and immigration reform, the president
was portrayed as ignorant.
This
sort of shameful reporting does violence to the essentiality of a free press.
It exposes the bias of selective reporting that is designed to cleverly
shoehorn a predetermined conclusion into what necessarily should be an
illumination of what actually transpired. That amounts to an assault on the
press by the press.
It
doesn’t give the man a chance, and that’s something we should all oppose, but
don’t. Shame on us.
LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock
resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.
