Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s decision to resign over foreign policy disagreements with President Trump has instilled panic across the political spectrum. “The departure of Mattis—the last ‘grown-up in the room’—is sure to set off tremors of anxiety” among America’s allies, wrote Slate’s Fred Kaplan. In The Daily Beast, Republican political consultant Rick Wilson described Mattis’s exit as “traumatic,” writing that he “was a talisman for the Washington and international foreign-policy communities, a point of smarts and stability, a ground-wire to short out Trump’s capricious impulses before they could damage America’s interests and values.” Even Mitch McConnell seemed rattled, sending out an uncharacteristically blunt statement.
My statement on Secretary Mattis pic.twitter.com/0n6Hye3096
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) December 21, 2018Mattis was viewed by Trump’s critics and allies alike as an essential guardrail, someone who could restrain Trump’s worst instincts and advocate for the national interest. Mattis, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former national security adviser H. R. McMaster, former economic adviser Gary Cohn, departing chief-of-staff John Kelly, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, was a member of what Axios dubbed the “Committee to Save America”—the group who viewed “their successes mostly in terms of bad decisions prevented, rather than accomplishments chalked up.” But, as the last two years have shown, having an “adult in the room” has rarely made much of a difference.
Mattis endeared himself to Trump for two primary reasons. The first was that his nickname—“Mad Dog”—led Trump to believe that he was bloodthirsty and reckless. The second was his hawkish stance on Iran—he had, after all, been fired from the Obama administration for advocating for war with Iran. Over the course of his two years as secretary of defense, he was repeatedly vexed by Trump’s handling of America’s alliances, particularly with countries in Europe and Asia, and his advice on Russia and the Iran deal went unheeded. He did convince Trump not to pull out of Afghanistan, but it appears that the president is on the cusp of doing just that. At the same time, Mattis went along with the administration’s draconian family separation policy and Trump’s decision to send 5,000 active-duty troops to the border as an election stunt (which Mattis defended as “humanitarian”) and was seemingly incapable of doing anything to influence Trump’s profoundly reckless approach to North Korea.
As the Trump administration progressed, and particularly as Trump surrounded himself with more like-minded advisers, like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, Mattis’s influence began to wane. By the fall, it was clear that he was on his way out; reports began circulating that he was planning to retire, while Trump told The New York Times that he thought that Mattis was “sort of a Democrat.” Whatever was said in private, Mattis was unable to prevent Trump from damaging alliances and creating diplomatic chaos. Ultimately, the decision to resign came after Trump decided to pull out of Syria, a reasonable decision being carried out in typically reckless fashion.
Mattis’s role in the administration was comforting to the many people outside of it who believed that a group of sensible, mature officials could restrain the president. The “adults in the room” fantasy was driven by the idea that things could be so much worse, if not for the courageous few who diligently worked to put out the fires that Trump started. “Until a few days ago Mattis was telling friends he felt an obligation to stay and do his best. His resignation suggests not merely that he thinks Syria was a bad decision, but that he now thinks Trump can’t be talked out of further bad decisions—on Afghanistan, and others too,” tweeted Bill Kristol.
But looking at the last two years, there’s little evidence that these “adults” did much of anything to restrain Trump or to talk him out of bad decisions. As Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, noted in the Times on Friday, Mattis had “only the power of delay and limited obstruction—not a practical veto or even, necessarily, a strong voice at the table in the White House Situation Room.” Mattis also rarely spoke out against the administration’s foreign policy decisions and went as far as to defend the pre-election troop deployment as “humanitarian.” Instead, he largely laid low, responsibly overseeing the Pentagon but ultimately doing little to influence American policy. He may have made people feel better about the chaos inside the administration, but did very little to stem it.
President Trump is ready to shut down the government over his central campaign promise—building a wall along the southern border—and he seems to believe he has the upper hand in this debate.
The Democrats, who know Steel Slats (Wall) are necessary for Border Security, are putting politics over Country. What they are just beginning to realize is that I will not sign any of their legislation, including infrastructure, unless it has perfect Border Security. U.S.A. WINS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2018It would be audacious, to say the least, to blame Democrats for a government shutdown. The GOP controls the entire government—at least until Democrats take over the House next month—so Republicans would be shutting down their own government. And just last week, in a meeting with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump took ownership of a potential shutdown, saying, “I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck. Because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it.”
But the idea that Trump has a political advantage over Democrats on the broader issue of immigration is not so easily dismissed. Support for the border wall, while still a minority of Americans, recently hit an all-time high. Although Trump’s fear-mongering over the migrant caravan failed to block the blue wave in last month’s midterm elections, there are reasons to believe that immigration will be a potent, even decisive issue in 2020, just as it was in 2016.
And then there’s the question of where Democrats stand on the issue—which isn’t entirely clear. They’re betting that Trump’s radicalism makes them the de facto party of reasonable immigration policy. But the risk is that the opposite will happen: that in the absence of a clear, affirmative message from Democrats, the public will see Trump and the Republicans as the ones doing something rather than nothing to address America’s broken immigration system.
The Trump administration has, to some extent, made it easy for Democrats who are squeamish on the issue of immigration. Over the last two years, it has repeatedly adopted grotesque and racist policies—banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries, separating migrant families at the border, sending 5,000 troops there to intimidate the most recent caravan—that Democrats can criticize without having to adopt a position themselves. But this strategy was seen as a major vulnerability for the opposition party, particularly in the lead-up to the midterms.
“The Democratic Party is generally pro-immigration,” Robert Draper wrote in The New York Times in October. “And yet many of its elected officeholders remain deeply wary of saying so and especially conflicted about how to address the flaws in the country’s immigration system—or whether to address them at all.” The problem, Draper argued, was that there were few political incentives for Democrats to adopt pro-immigration policies. Voters simply cared about other issues, while many of the party’s core constituencies—particularly labor and environmental groups—were ambivalent at best.
For New York magazine’s Andrew Sullivan, this was a philosophical problem. “It’s a pressing, practical, and in some ways existential one,” he wrote about the migrant caravan. “It cuts to the core of whether the United States has to choose between being inhumane to the point of betraying some core moral principles and remaining a sovereign nation in control of who joins its population.” Sullivan approvingly quoted The Atlantic’s David Frum, who had recently stated, “If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do.”
This framing echoes the attacks made by Trump and his allies: If Democrats are objecting to the detention or rejection of asylum-seekers at the border, then what is the alternative that they’re offering—to end border enforcement altogether, simply allowing anyone to enter the country? “Every single Democrat in the U.S. Senate has signed up for the open borders, and it’s a bill, it’s called the ‘open borders bill.’ What’s going on? And it’s written by, guess who? Dianne Feinstein,” Trump said at an October rally in Missouri, distorting a Feinstein’s bill to stop the government from separating migrant families. He predicted the bill would lead to “a tidal wave of drugs and crime [that] would pour into our nation like never, ever before.”
For the last several years, Democrats have adopted a defensive posture on immigration. “Democratic politicians have feared that supporting immigrants would result in being voted out of office,” wrote Draper, “specifically by conservative constituents who fear Muslim terrorists or undocumented Latinos taking advantage of public services, overrunning schools and hospitals.” Pressed by NBC’s Chuck Todd on comments he made that criticized illegal immigration in 2009, Schumer made the case that Democrats were not the party of open borders:
No Democrat believes that there’s no difference between legal and illegal immigration. We Democrats—we’re for a path to citizenship, however, not amnesty, a very difficult path to citizenship. In 2013, every single Democrat voted for it. A whole bunch of Republicans, led by John McCain, voted for it. And it was thwarted in the House. So we want, we want to create a path to citizenship for those illegally. But we don’t think they’re the same.
This is still largely the Democratic position on immigration: “common sense” border security measures, and some kind of path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It’s no accident that Schumer keeps bringing up 2013’s Gang of 8 bipartisan reform bill, which failed to pass: The Democrats’ immigration policy hasn’t really evolved since then. While some innovations have cropped up, notably “Abolish ICE,” the party’s position on immigration remains opaque. They’re against Trump’s policies, to be sure. But it’s rarely clear what precise policies the party supports.
That provides an opening for Republicans. Immigration is an extremely important issue to their base; Trump’s rise is largely attributable to his restrictionist rhetoric. It’s also important to the wider public: 21 percent rate immigration as the most important problem facing the country, more than any other issue. Thus, Republicans believe, perhaps rightly, that it’s a wedge issue. Even the border wall is gaining in popularity: 43 percent now support it, up from 38 percent in August (and 33 percent in April of last year). That said, Trump’s rhetoric also has caused support for immigration to increase over the last two years. Recent polling found that 28 percent of Americans believe the country should increase immigration, up from 21 percent in the summer of 2016—and only 14 percent in 2009. That number is now comparable to the number who believe it should decrease immigration, suggesting that a meaningful coalition of pro-immigration voters exists.
The midterms were a test case for 2020, to a point. The Republicans desperately sought to make illegal immigration their closing issue—and nearly succeeded, with stories about the migrant caravan reaching a crescendo in the days before the election. But Democrats didn’t take the bait, instead focusing on health care, which has become their singular issue. That strategy ultimately worked, as Democrats won a record share of the midterm popular vote and gained 40 seats in the House of Representatives. But immigration may have played a key role in helping the GOP maintain control of the Senate, where the party actually gained seats. This is the calculus that guides Republicans: Their immigration policies may be broadly unpopular, but they are popular in a number of key red and purple states.
By shutting down the government, Trump is betting that he can benefit politically by casting himself as the only person in Washington bold enough to act on immigration. There are good reasons to believe that this won’t work—on the shutdown specifically, anyway. Recent polling from Quinnipiac found that 51 percent of voters would blame him and his party more than Democrats, whereas 37 percent said the opposite. But Trump likely isn’t worrying about public opinion over the next few weeks or even months. He thinks a shutdown over the border wall will benefit him in two years, and right now, the evidence that he’s right is no less convincing than the evidence that he’s wrong.
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