State of the Union: Trump sounds unifying note

Donald Trump has sounded the right note in his State of the Union speech about bridging divisions, healing wounds and moving forward, but will Americans believe him?

This mercurial president is many things but he is not a natural unifier-in-chief.

It was surreal to see Trump stand in front of his Democrat rival, house speaker Nancy Pelosi, and call for the building of a new coalition given the bitter war between the two which recently shut down the US government for a record 34 days.

“Together we can break decades of political stalemate,’ Trump declared. “We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future.’’

Nothing in the first two years of Trump’s presidency suggests that he is the sort of president who believes these words. Washington is more polarised today than it has been in a generation and the president’s combative style has only exacerbated this.

Yet Trump has little choice but to try to move forward and this speech may be an important marker. He only has until 15 February to strike a deal with the Democrats on his border wall or else Washington will once again be paralysed by division. If Trump wants to achieve any legislation of note in the final two years of his term, he will need the support of Democrats who now control the house.

The irony of Trump’s speech is that the state of the union is relatively healthy right now but the president is struggling to sell that story because of the disunity and dysfunction which has enveloped Washington over his demands for a border wall.

Trump rightly used his speech to tout his achievements on the economy, slashing anti-business regulations and tax cuts. Economic growth is humming along at 3 per cent, while unemployment is only 4 per cent with real wage gains now approaching 4 per cent. This was the central compact which Trump made to his supporters in 2016 as he reminded people in his speech.

Illegal immigration is falling despite the resident’s alarmist rhetoric about the issue while crime is also down.

Overseas, Trump can also validly argue that his detente with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has at least led to a halt in that country’s nuclear and missile testing even if there is scepticism that a second summit will yield genuine progress towards denuclearisation.

He can also rightly claim to have overseen the mopping up of Islamic State’s resistance on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.

To his supporters Trump can claim credit for following through on a long list of promises from withdrawing for the Paris Climate change accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership to redrawing the NAFTA trade deal, confronting China on trade and reducing America’s military footprint overseas.

Yet the real challenge for Trump will be to follow through on his own call today for greater political unity. Trump has never claimed to be a consensus president. He doesn’t have the soft-touch of a Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Trump is a natural bare knuckle brawler who bludgeons rather than negotiates his way towards outcomes.

For his first two years in office, when Republicans held the majority in both houses of Congress, Trump did not attempt to court the Democrats on anything or build relationships on Capitol Hill.

Yet he now has to negotiate with his newly-empowered opponents if he wants to implement his others key parts of his agenda such as wholesale reinvestment in America’s crumbling infrastructure. This sort of leadership is not Trump’s strength and it is entirely possible that Trump will destroy his own call for bipartisanship within 24 hours by sending an incendiary tweet. It is also possible that the Democrats will act as perennial saboteurs, blocking Trump’s wall and other proposals because they believe they will win any showdown.

So Trump’s state of the union message of unity may end up having the lifespan of a litre of milk or a loaf of bread, but that doesn’t mean that his message is wrong.

Unless there is some sort of commonsense compromise from both sides in Washington right now, US politics will enter a prolonged and ugly state of gridlock and the state of the union will be in worse shape this time next year.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia