“I was very proud of the Senate Democratic Leader, Chuck Schumer. He could speak New York to the president.” So said Nancy Pelosi, showing the distance between hard-left San Franciscans, for whom every belief is a red line they cannot cross, and pragmatic New Yorkers of both parties.
She is right about one thing: there is such a thing as knowing how to speak New York, and that knowledge is what made it possible for Trump and Schumer to cut a deal. You might not like the deal, but it is one that Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Ryan could not reach in part because the president and the Republican leaders speak different languages.
Let’s start with The Donald and Schumer. Both come from an outer borough, the president from Queens, the senator from Brooklyn. Not quite “New York” as we Manhattanites, present and past, understand the term, but close enough.
Both the son of a millionaire property developer and the son of small businessman survived and thrived in their chosen professions—Trump in the cut-throat world of New York real estate development (often with banks breathing down his neck), Schumer in the hurlyburly of New York Democratic politics, balancing the demands of trade union bosses who can deliver votes and Wall Street bankers who can deliver oodles of campaign cash.
Both learned how to handle the press, Trump by leaking stories to Page 6 of the New York Post, Schumer by satisfying the leftish papers with his anti-free-trade talk and rightish ones with his open-immigration stance.
Speaking New York means more than moving your lips. The president could have ordered the White House chef to lay on an elaborate meal for his new pals, Nancy and Chuck. He didn’t. It was Chinese food of the sort that both Trump and Schumer undoubtedly feasted on in their younger days in Queens and Brooklyn. Not the posh fare Winston Churchill ordered at his political working dinners, but food designed to remind the men where they came from, and with luck, to produce nostalgia for the days when Trump contributed to Schumer’s campaigns.
Then the conversation. Schumer lays out what he wants and the president asks, “So what’s in it for me?” And Schumer reels off a list. No hiding behind language about the good of the country, or ideological positions, or “I would like to do that but my core voters would revolt.” Those pressures are assumed to be beating on both men, each of whom has three jobs. First, present what he wants from the dinner. Second, figure out how close he can come to giving the other guy what he needs, not what he wants. Third, persuade the other guy that he is getting as much as he is giving up.
In any deal, especially between people who will be dealing with each other for years to come on matters they cannot predict, it is important that both parties leave satisfied—no winner, no loser—and trusting his counterparty to deliver, no excuses. Despite the complaints of Democrats that Schumer did not bring his long spoon to dinner with the Devil, and complaints of Trump supporters that he was rolled, both men know better.
Schumer’s Democrats now know (or believe) that he can deliver the president for some of their top priorities, especially trade and infrastructure. The Republican establishment, which has delivered none of Trump’s agenda items, now knows that he is no longer its captive, and that if they can’t deliver on tax reform he will shop for support in the Chuck & Nancy store across the aisle.
Which, come to think of it, is not all that different from playing off one supplier against another when building a hotel.
