Following the election of Donald Trump as our 47th President, there commenced a stream of “plans” announced by his office and coalition friends regarding various subjects, including deportation of illegal immigrants, H-1B Visas, making Canada our 51st state, imposing tariffs on Mexico if that country does not assist in accepting deported illegal migrants, “purchasing” Greenland, the autonomous territory of Denmark, assuming control over the Panama Canal, and so on.
Trump’s critics immediately struck back with multiple reasons not to proceed with these plans and how they would react if the plans were finalized. My thought at the time was to seriously question the wisdom of exposing these plans, giving the opposition time to gear up its machine to slap back and possibly block their implementation.
After further consideration, I’m convinced that the reasoning behind releasing these intentions was brilliant. Why not find out how the opposition will react and on what grounds those reactions will be founded. It is also important that the man in the White House discover as early as possible how his own coalition will react, and on what bases, when he offers legislation to enact these ideas into the law of the land. Early on we witnessed “rifts” that developed within his party about some of these ideas. But, again, it is valuable for him to know earlier rather than later which direction the opposition will come from.
Once he determined the support, or lack thereof, of these proposals, he could better calculate the success-rate of pushing them further, and what might be required to accomplish them. For example, I doubt seriously that he truly believes that Greenland will “sell” itself to the United States, but in the negotiations to do so the U.S. might accomplish agreements with the government of Greenland to permit the use of its soil to keep track of the Russians and even use that geography to defend our interests, if necessary.
The same can be said of promoting making the country of Canada one of the United States of America. It is more than a long shot to accomplish this item on Trump’s wish-list, but the idea’s timely proposal may lead to better cooperation between the countries on a number of important border and economic issues.
So, it may be easy to criticize Trump on some or many of these matters but, before we do, time must be devoted to analyzing what reasons he might have had to expose his playing cards in public before the need to do so. He may be an irritating person at times, but he has been successful in the past and we pray that he will assume that mantle in the future for the sake of our country.
