Here's how to shut down the government shutdown

Our Unreality TV stage play, performed before a live audience at the vortex of the world’s most powerful and formerly globally revered national government, has reached its first dramatically climactic moment.

Here’s our story so far:

We watched our Commander-in-Chief demand what he assumed was his deferential Congress to hand him a blank check for billions of our tax dollars to build The Wall he always promised us Mexico would be paying for. We watched him shut down our government because Congress wouldn’t give him all the money he wanted – which meant that by depriving 800,000 employees of paychecks he was really taking as hostages millions of family members. We watched news screens showing us hostage videos – patriotic government workers explaining, often tearfully, that they can’t pay for their family’s housing, food, life-saving meds and so on. We watched, as the shutdown passed a record one-month mark, as famous experts warned us the shutdown was endangering our security – the Coast Guard commandant, FBI agents, and finally five former secretaries of homeland security (including four-star Gen. John Kelly, who was the president’s chief of staff until just weeks ago).

We just saw Act One end with our Commander-in-Chief’s triumphant stage exit. First he invited congressional Democratic leaders to the White House – and stormed out of the meeting when they wouldn’t give him the blank check for the Wall that he was demanding. And he demanded an invitation to deliver his State of the Union address in the House chamber. That came together as his own version of a dramatic exit – veritably flinging open a door, storming through it, and slamming it behind him.

But as we watched, we knew something our Commander-in-Chief clearly didn’t realize: President Donald Trump had triumphantly stormed through a door and into a dark closet!

Standing there in the darkness, Trump seemed to see the big picture for the first time: He had virtually invited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to disinvite him. She told him he won’t be allowed to make his speech until he has reopened the government and was paying back all those patriotic government workers he’d been holding as his hostages. Only when America is once again a functioning union will its president will welcomed to deliver his State of the Union address.

Meanwhile, Trump knew his poll ratings were plummeting. Americans increasingly concluded his demand to build his wall on our southern border wasn’t worth shutting down our government. Now, like the guy who walked through the wrong door – and stormed into the closet – Trump had no choice but to come back into the spotlight, admit he wouldn’t be giving his State of the Union address as long as the shutdown continued. Then maybe find a compromise that would let him claim a victory and end it.

Here’s where he may be helped by the Democratic leaders’ inability to remain so unskilled at the arts and crafts of message politics. It really doesn’t require heavy lifting. It’s simply about a party being able to do what it really stands for – and communicate that truth to the voters who were once the Democratic Party’s base: the blue collar workers who voted for Trump. Barriers can and must be part of any solution – and that might be enough to give Trump what he needs to shut off his shutdown.

Here’s a Democratic leadership message that fits their party’s goals, yet still is a path to a compromise:

“Our priority is to keep our homeland safe – and that means spending to keep our borders safe and secure. Yes, at times that means paying to build barriers – and of course we’ll do that. But mainly it means we must first listen to the experts. The experts are telling us we need the best high technology security, and a lot more manpower, to prevent drug smugglers, terrorists and criminals from entering into our country. But also it means that we all have to have the guts not waste our taxpayer dollars on gimmicks the experts say won’t do the job. Especially, we can’t waste tax dollars on gimmicks that were thought up by a greenhorn who wanted to run for president and wanted to create an issue and a slogan that sounded like a solution – The Wall – even though experts say it won’t do the job. Indeed, experts say his famous huge concrete wall could even make things worse, by hiding bad guys who are trying to climb over it or tunnel under it.

“So all sides need to get rid of our simple-sounding slogans and start working with each other to safeguard our borders and make America safer.”

Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive.