OPINION:
A Trump charm and, yes, intelligence lit up television screens all over America on Tuesday afternoon.
The extraordinary bipartisan meeting showcased at same time intelligence and charm residing in the assembled Democratic and GOP lawmakers.
I can’t remember the last time we saw any president do this, if ever. But there was President Trump skillfully running a televised White House get-together with lawmakers from both houses of Congress, some with the well-deserved reputation of being compulsive professional Trump bashers.
There they were — Lindsey Graham, Jon Tester, Steny Hoyer, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Martha McSally, Heidi Heitkamp, Dick Durbin, Thom Tillis, Henry Cuellar and other Senate and House members.
They were talking over difficult issues and exchanging ideas around the same table. No grandstanding. No knifing. No superciliousness.
I felt myself hurtling back through time to civics class at Colfax Grade School on Beechwood Boulevard in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, circa 1946.
I was happy back then, as I remember it, to think that I was learning the model of self-governance that we lucky Americans inherited from our founders.
Mr. Trump went back to that model for the 45 minutes he led the televised portion of that bipartisan meeting in the Cabinet Room.
Mr. Trump was warm, generous, welcoming, agreeable, patient, funny and clearly in charge without being imperious.
He was repeatedly humorous in a presidential way.
He never jumped down anybody’s throat on immigration, defense spending, border, DACA — you name it.
I’ll bet millions of other Americans watching were, like me, thinking, you know, the president’s right. Congress should go back to earmarking legislation to create a better chance for the compromises you’ve got to have get the people’s business done in a two-party republican (small “r”) form of democracy.
Blowing up incentives for cooperation was always a childlike exercise in righteous feel-goodism but never the way to drain the swap.
Better your lawmaker decides where and to whom the bacon goes than some unknown, unseen bureaucrat.
What made me feel giddy and keeps me feeling that way is that I haven’t seen in I don’t know how many years if ever such intelligent, civil, cooperative, patriotic, bipartisan spirit among a president and legislators normally at each others’ throats.
No, I’m not talking about the kind of saccharin kumbayah silliness of the endless cave-ins of yore that were erroneously labeled as “compromises.”
I don’t mean the one-sided “bipartisan” agreement that actually advances that dreamy and destructive kind of do-goodism while phonily claiming victory for personal responsibility, liberty and individualism.
Freed from the restraints and cautions of Bannonism, the president suddenly seems to soar like an eagle.
Having slipped the surly bonds of the adviser who was right on the issues that matter but wrong for the role, President Trump is letting himself be President Trump.
Now we shall see if he is at heart the steadfast opponent of pointless foreign interventionism and of making war in chasing the fantasy of regime-change that has a desirable outcome.
We’ll see if on his own he is the trustworthy guardian of the public purse.
We’ll learn if he remains the honestly committed, no-nonsense border enforcer whom we wanted to win last November.
Most of all, we’ll know if the Trump he let be Trump on Tuesday is the most sustainable and valuable resource we expect him to be.
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