EXTRA! EXTRA!

(The following is not one of my regular Wednesday columns, but is a follow-up to a concern I expressed a few days ago).

There are some controversies where there are clear winners and losers. I think of political contests. But there are other serious disagreements where the best outcome is for each party to come away declaring a win. WIN-WIN to replace WIN-LOSE, may require the willingness on both sides to hear and accept a new answer to an old problem while not claiming either an overwhelming victory or suffering a humiliating defeat.

In the current controversy over border security, is there the possibility of a WIN-WIN, or will the argument continue until one side is decimated, accepts defeat, and gives up? I doubt if the latter results in either side’s self-interest, or that of the United States or Mexico. I suggest that there is a way out, and the path to it may be found in a recent comment by President Trump.

Several days ago, in declaring once again the necessity of a wall, Trump suggested that the question was not really about a concrete barrier, but that the physical composition of a wall or fence was not critical, and the barrier could be composed of steel or some other substance. I think that this remark offers a significant opening in the conversation, and offers a WIN-WIN possibility.

If the real question is “how to secure the border,” and not “what should be the composition of the barrier,” the answer might rest with modern technology.

Certainly there are today far more sophisticated answers to border security than either concrete or steel. If engineers and technicians can demonstrate what might be the best way to secure the border, the controversy might end with a WIN-WIN scenario. No matter how you frame it, an electronic wall is still a wall!

Congress might immediately come up with the requested five-plus billion dollars, and construction might quickly begin. President Trump would have his modern, “wall” and could claim a win. Congress would have funded the best path to border security and claim a win. The nation would be spared the embarrassment of relying on a border device that would not and could not work, and claim a win. The 800,000 who have been furloughed would be back at work and could celebrate everyone’s win. So we all win. This way out rests on President Trump’s suggestion that the answer to the problem may not lie with concrete or steel, but in more sophisticated modern wisdom.

Getting this scenario to our national decision makers is the task assigned to WE, THE PROPLE, and my guess is that includes you.