Help! We're Stuck!

            Washington is like a hotel elevator that’s been stuck between floors. It can get going again, but the passengers in it can’t agree on whether to go up or down. Meanwhile, hotel business has come to a halt.

            To resolve the impasse, one of the parties has to give in. But Democrats have taken such a hard stand against The Wall (an immorality, insists Speaker Pelosi) they cannot bend. President Trump knows he can’t back down either because, as Senator Graham has warned him, it would be the end of his presidency. Is a compromise possible that would give both parties a reason to claim victory?

            As I write this, there is no such compromise on the horizon. What I do see is a possible constitutional crisis in the making. The president has already hinted that he has the authority to build the wall as matter of national security. If he goes down that road, the courts will stop him. Or try to. The courts have already overstepped their bounds several times by preventing the executive branch from exercising its constitutionally defined authority on immigration. On those occasions the president chose to appeal and let higher courts resolve the issues. But this time the president may just choose to defy the courts and proceed to build the wall, the courts be damned. And that would provoke a constitutional crisis and an immediate cry for impeachment from the Democrats.

            I hope I’m wrong about this. There has to be a better way. Governments, like hotels, can’t function when their elevators are stuck between floors.