In defiance of all expectations, a moment of calm for Washington

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Suddenly – without warning, against all recent precedent, in defiance of all expectations – Washington may be experiencing a rapprochement moment.

It may all disappear like a summertime shower. But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is telling North Korea that the United States is not its enemy and it doesn't seek to overthrow Kim Jong-un. Republicans and Democrats are inching away from confrontation on health care – and clearly inching toward joint efforts to repair Obamacare. GOP lawmakers are issuing signals they'd like to work with their rivals on overhauling the tax code. And there are indications that an infrastructure bill may lure Democrats into negotiations, even joint commitments, on spending projects.

These rare breaths of fresh air in a stifling Washington August are the first indications that the congressional combat that has marked the past several years – along with the heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula – may themselves go on a midsummer holiday.

Whether that holiday persists, and whether it extends beyond Labour Day, when tax overhaul and other vital issues are on the capital agenda, is the question of the hour. A critical unknown: whether the rapprochement slowly unfolding in Washington takes hold in the White House.

"What you are seeing – for the first time since Donald Trump took office – is what stability could look like," said Peter D. Hart, the veteran Democratic pollster. "Congress can begin to do its work and, if the President follows the lead that has been given to him, he can start to even out his performance."

There have been a handful of green sprouts of co-operation in the days since the President elevated retired general John Kelly to chief of staff of the White House. Though the dismissal of Reince Priebus, a former Republican National Committee chairman, deprived the White House of his strong ties to the GOP establishment that reviles Mr. Trump, Mr. Kelly has imposed new discipline and clear lines of authority at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The White House, which still has not won congressional approval of scores of presidential appointees, took heart with the Senate confirmation Tuesday of Christopher Wray as the new director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The 92-5 vote in favour of Mr. Wray – only five Democrats opposed him, two from the liberal state of Massachusetts – provided a stark contrast with the partisanship that has marked other nomination fights.

There are institutional and political impediments that have prevented earlier moves toward bipartisanship, however, and these impediments reflect the changing nature of the two parties.

A generation ago, there were liberals and moderates in the Republican Party and conservatives in the Democratic Party, and their presence provided a bridge between the parties that often led to co-operation between the two. But beginning in 1964, when Barry Goldwater won the Republican presidential nomination, moderates and liberals felt increasingly uncomfortable inside the party and some, such as Mayor John Lindsay of New York, eventually moved to the Democratic Party, where he mounted an unsuccessful presidential campaign. At the same time, conservatives, such as Senator Strom Thurmond, moved the other way; the South Carolinian became a Republican in 1964.

"The two parties haven't been speaking to each other because they haven't had to," says Craig Shirley, a former Republican political operative who has written biographies of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. "They don't have the common ground to do it." But they have one thing in common: abysmal approval ratings. The latest YouGov/Economist poll shows that Americans disapprove of Congress by an astonishing 55-12 margin.

And yet there are some areas where the two parties are beginning to move together. Far from Washington, Republican and Democratic governors joined to express opposition to many elements of the health-care overhaul that failed even to reach the floor of the Senate last month.

This week, Republicans and Democrats are working together to counter Mr. Trump's threats to undermine Obamacare by refusing to provide the cost-savings subsidies that allow health insurers to keep premiums low for policies offered through Obamacare.

More than three dozen lawmakers from both parties in the U.S. House of Representatives began to fashion a proposal to make changes in Obamacare to assure that the American health-insurance market does not collapse.

In the Senate, the leader of a similar effort is Lamar Alexander, who twice ran for president, was a popular Republican governor of Tennessee and served in George W. Bush's cabinet. He is the chairman of the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee and this week said Congress must "stabilize and strengthen the individual health-insurance market so that Americans will be able to buy insurance at affordable prices in the year 2018."

At the same time, Democrats made it clear that they will not put social-security pension supplements, Medicare programs for the elderly or Medicaid programs for the poor at risk in any tax overhaul and warned that they would oppose a plan that was, as a letter signed by 45 party members put it, "a cover story for delivering tax cuts to the wealthiest."

But the White House remains hopeful that it can help shape a tax overhaul that will win Democratic votes and, in fact, has openly invited Democratic input. One surprising but increasingly likely area of agreement: lowering corporate taxes. Those of the United States are at 35 per cent. Canada's corporate taxes are at 15 per cent.

Not that partisanship is going to disappear entirely, or soon.

"There's still the overhang of the Russian investigation," said Mr. Hart, the Democratic pollster. "If it captures all of the President's attention and interest, it makes it hard for him to show some regularity and for the parties to fully come together on much."