After watching President Trump and the responses by Senate minority leader Schumer and House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, I was struck at the pronounced inability of our current political leadership to engage the population and change minds through the use of persuasive speech.

President Trump’s speech was too terse. It seems to me he didn’t take sufficient time to craft his message or practice his delivery. He failed to explain how we got to this low point and did not establish context. He was unable to shift the premises of the debate to the urgent need for better border security.


As to the extent of the current crisis — and I do believe that is the proper term — he made a few good points. But he never paused to let them sink in. He didn’t have a through line connecting his various points. And his conclusion lacked vision. I give it a generous C+. He needed an A+ to pressure Democrats off their current destructive intransigence.

If there is one positive point for the president last night, it was the catastrophic performance of Pelosi and Schumer. How bad was it? The photo of them standing stiffly with grotesquely frozen expressions has become a meme and source of caption contests. F.

But the president bears the burden of moving the people sufficiently for them to pressure their elected representatives to follow where the president wishes to lead the country. To grasp the depth of his failure, imagine if Ronald Reagan or JFK were still in office. They had the ability to engage the population, and not just their core supporters. Good grief, if Trump had half of their persuasive ability, this issue would already be in the rear-view mirror.