PD Editorial: Terms of engagement with Donald Trump

We understand the decision by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, and at least eight other Democrats in Congress not to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday. We understand it but don’t support it.

Here’s why. While we, too, did not back Trump during the election and continue to have concerns about his Cabinet, his plans and his reckless use of social media - including his gratuitous attack Saturday on George Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon - attending the inauguration is a demonstration of respect for the office, not necessarily the officeholder. It also honors the traditions of our country.

Although there have been exceptions, members from both parties have historically attended inaugurations regardless of which party won the White House. The ceremony also has symbolic significance as it’s held on the west steps of the U.S. Capitol and is followed by a bipartisan luncheon for the new president and vice president - one that’s hosted by the members of Congress.

As President Barack Obama said during his farewell address last week, the peaceful transfer of power from one freely elected president to the next has been “a hallmark of our democracy.” That’s a tradition worth standing up for - and applauding. And that begins with attending.

Nevertheless, we understand the frustrations that people like Huffman and others as Americans say goodbye to Barack Obama and hello to a president who lost the popular vote and garnered the support of about one in every five voters in Sonoma County, a county that boasted the second highest turnout in the state.

There’s no question that Democratic lawmakers, reporters and others will face many challenges in engaging with a president who, even before taking the oath of office, is waging war with the news media, the intelligence community and a spectrum of government entities, including the small Office of Government Ethics, which, for good reason, is not satisfied with Trump’s refusal to divest from his global business holdings. Even so, Democrats cannot resort to the obstructionist tactics that GOP leaders employed even before Obama took office in 2009 when House GOP whip Eric Cantor and then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell laid out a strategy of all-out resistance. “If he was for it,” former Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, once said, “we had to be against it.”

Holding to that no-compromise strategy is just about all the Republicans in Congress accomplished in eight years.

Taking a similar tactic is tempting for Democrats, particularly given the hypocrisy of Republicans like McConnell who says the president’s nominees deserve a quick confirmation process and that the American people would not tolerate Democrats blocking Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. (This is the same individual who broke historic precedent in blocking Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, leaving a Supreme Court seat vacant for nearly a year.)

Nonetheless, the public is weary of scorched-earth tactics and gridlock. Voters don’t care whether Democrats and Republicans in the nation’s capital like one another, but they do expect them to work together - for the benefit of the country. And that, too, is a tradition that should be respected even if, in recent years, it has been neglected.