Put aside Tuesday's Oval Office theatrics and remember this: There's a compromise within reach on the wall and immigration for President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats--if each side has the spinal fortitude to face down its own most rabid partisans and take it.
For Trump, the art of this deal should be easy to grasp. To secure funding for his wall, he should offer a path to legal status or citizenship for more than 1 million "dreamers"--mainly undocumented immigrants in their teens and 20s brought to this country by their parents and raised here since childhood.
Granted, funding the wall, even in stages, is distasteful to lots of Democrats; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the likely next House speaker, has called it "immoral." But many in the party have supported past efforts to bolster security along the border--more Border Patrol agents, more technology and more infrastructure, including, yes, barriers.
The wall as Trump imagines it may be wasteful overkill, but it's a stretch to frame it as a moral issue, as Pelosi does.
Any compromise worth the trouble involves painful concessions for each side, but in this case, if assessed with cool heads, the concessions are a far cry from excruciating.
Editorial on 12/15/2018