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Many Mainers may have never heard of U.S. Sen. James Lankford before his leadership in crafting the now-rejected Senate border deal. They might still not know much about him even after his recent national attention.
Well, here’s how one fellow Mainer who works with the Oklahoma Republican described him earlier this week.
On Tuesday, independent U.S. Sen. Angus King described Lankford as “one of the most capable, intelligent and conservative members of the Republican caucus, who knows more about the border than anybody else — certainly on the Republican side, I would argue probably in the whole Senate.”
Lankford had the gall to use that capability, intelligence and conservatism to do something outrageous: Try to fix a problem.
He is now facing criticism from within his party for doing what Republican colleagues asked him to do, by crafting a compromise linking border security and foreign aid. He channeled the frequent conservative refrain that illegal immigration needs to be stopped and legal immigration welcomed. He recognized the realities of governing in a divided government. He dared to try to address a crisis, which his Republican colleagues want to campaign on while a Democrat sits in the White House.
For anyone still wondering about Lankford and what he stands for, especially as former President Donald Trump talks about political consequences for the Oklahoma senator, there might be no better introduction than the sensible speech Lankford gave Wednesday on the Senate floor.
“The bill that’s been put together has been a bipartisan effort. Welcome to the United States Senate. That’s what we have to do,” Lankford said. “While I have people from around the country and back home that say, ‘Do a Republican-only bill. Just get all of our priorities and none of theirs,’ I smile at them and say, ‘Welcome to governance.’ You can do a partisan bill in the House, but in the Senate we have to look at each other across the aisle, then figure out a way to be able to solve this.”
With the deal he helped negotiate about to be torpedoed in a procedural vote on Wednesday, Lankford made an impassioned case for doing imperfect but necessary work on behalf of the American people (otherwise known as governing, for the members of Congress apparently unfamiliar with the concept).
“This very divided nation brings to us a very divided Congress. Currently we have a Republican two-vote majority in the House of Representatives and a Democrat one-vote majority in the United States Senate. It doesn’t get much closer than that, to being equally divided in two bodies,” he continued. “But that means if we’re going to solve something, we have to sit down together and solve it. That’s how it works when you make law. You can do press conferences without the other side, but you can’t make law without the other side in the United States Senate.”
As Trump hints about retribution for Lankford for this high crime of trying to at least partially solve immigration challenges during a presidential election year, we hope people can see through the former president’s cynicism. One of the best things about America, or at least it used to be, has been our ability to navigate differences and solve problems together. As Americans and as voters, if we turn on those who try to embody our best qualities, we’ll be stuck with those who reflect our worst impulses.
Stoking fear, demonizing others, pandering to those shouting the loudest — those things are easy, at least for the so-called leaders willing to do them. Compromise, reconciliation, doing the actual work to make durable law in a divided country — those are the hard things.
Lankford tried to do something difficult, and did so at the behest of his fellow Senate Republicans, who wanted to restrict immigration — especially by those seeking asylum in the U.S. — and to tie those changes to foreign aid, especially to Ukraine and Israel. And, at least in the drafting of the bill, he succeeded. He worked across the aisle and helped craft legislation that the union representing Border Patrol agents endorsed and called “a step in the right direction” that “is far better than the current status quo.”
Lankford succeeded, and like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, most of his fellow Republicans failed him by refusing to support the deal they sought in the first place.
Lankford was not totally alone. A handful of other Senate Republicans, including Susan Collins, shared his pragmatic approach. But unfortunately, most of his Republican colleagues pulled the football away, and good grief does it look like politics at its worst.
Trump, transparently wanting to hold on to the border crisis as an issue to campaign on rather than an issue to solve, called the reasonable border deal “lunacy.” And apparently if Trump has his way, Lankford will be punished politically for all his good work. Hopefully, the American people can recognize that this is the real lunacy.
