The Tribune

WE ALL learned of the US government shut down at midnight on Saturday. Some offices really did close their doors. But operations deemed essential, including military and law enforcement, would continue. Most observers believed the shutdown would not be lengthy. The best argument for that is what happened during the last significant shut down.

It was 22 years ago. Bill Clinton was president. The rancorous history professor, Newt Gingrich, was the newly minted speaker of the US House of Representatives. Gingrich had ridden to power and prominence on his cleverly labelled “Contract with America”, which among other inducements promised a push for term limits for Congressmen and Senators. Voter dissatisfaction with Washington politics was also at high levels two decades ago.

So over two periods totaling 27 days encompassing Christmas and New Year’s Day 1995-6, the US government closed down most of its regular activities. The major issues were differences between Clinton and the Republican-controlled House on Medicare, the environment, education and public health.

Public reaction to the shut down was swift and decisive. The shut down was massively unpopular, so both parties quickly scrambled, as they are doing now, to blame the other. When the dust had settled, however, it was Gingrich and the Republicans who were awarded the lion’s share of the responsibility. In fact, voters blamed the GOP by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points. It has been argued that the resulting weakness and disarray in Republican ranks gave Clinton enough relative strength to survive scandals and scares to come, including an impeachment.

Fast forward to 2018. The government is again partially shuttered, with the key issue appearing to be continued funding for a piece of five-year-old legislation from the Obama administration called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival Act, nicknamed the Dream Act. DACA offers a respite from deportation for minor children of illegal immigrants. Funding to support the legislation is due to expire in early March, and the Democrats have refused to help pass a budget without Dream Act funding included.

The overall effect of the standoff, aside from the inconvenience to many and pain to some, is to continue to highlight and emphasise race relations and immigration policy in the United States. President Trump has made himself a lightning rod for American racism with his now universally reported comments about Haiti and other predominantly non-white nations. His administration seemingly intends to roll back US immigration policy that has prevailed for more than 50 years, since the Great Society legislation of Lyndon Johnson.

Largely forgotten but now again relevant is US immigration policy that was enacted during the 1920s and prevailed until the Johnson administration changed it in 1965. A key to that earlier policy was 1924 legislation assigning numerical limits to immigrants based upon their country of origin. Widely reported research reveals that in some years, for example, Norway received 6,500 annual admissions, while Africa as a whole received less than 20% of that total. When Trump said the US should admit more Norwegians in preference to Africans, he seemed to hark back almost 100 years in time and public policy evolution.

In the current fevered political environment in Washington, an otherwise useful and timely consideration of race relations and immigration policy in the US is largely lost in the constant flood of political speculation. The question becomes: How will Trump’s racist remarks and nativist policies affect the 2018 elections and beyond?

This is not an easy calculus. Former Trump political guru and master strategist Steve Bannon was widely quoted last summer on the subject. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we (Republicans) go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats,” Bannon said.

Respected liberal political commentator Ezra Klein did not disagree. Quoted recently in the New York Times, he wrote “even if the US is becoming more diverse, whites still comprise a large majority of the electorate. The figure was 71 percent in 2016. If Republicans can consolidate white votes, they will win”. Klein and others believe Trump and the GOP could win with a strong economic programme built on infrastructure and jobs. But they see no evidence so far this will be the Republican approach. Stay tuned.