May 12, 2011
Obama's Immigration Reform Vision: Clouded by Cynicism
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By Mark SalterPresident Obama made a campaign stop in El Paso, Texas, this past Monday to shore up his support from Hispanic voters, who are disappointed by his failure to achieve comprehensive reform of our immigration laws.
To be clear, he did not go to El Paso to encourage Congress to pass reform legislation, the purpose he claimed in his remarks. On the contrary, his very partisan speech castigating Republicans for their continued insistence on improved border security in advance of other reforms almost certainly made that task harder, not easier, to achieve, as he surely knew it would.
Obama did not use the speech to announce he would institute some reforms by executive order rather than legislation, as reform supporters hoped he would. He did not announce that the White House would send Congress draft legislation he would like passed. In an interview with reporters, a White House aide explained, "Often when the White House just puts something on the table, it can become a point of conflict and not an inflection point to move forward."
The president would have us believe that cynically mocking Republicans for their supposed cynicism -- "Maybe Republicans will say we need a moat," he joked, "or alligators in the moat; they'll never be satisfied" -- wasn't offered as a point of conflict but to move forward the bipartisan cooperation necessary to pass a bill.
None of this comes as much of a surprise.
Obama has never been serious about passing immigration reform. But he has been very adroit at using the unresolved issue to advance his own political interests.
In 2005, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John McCain sponsored comprehensive legislation that would have made substantial improvements to border security, establish a guest-worker program, and give the 12 to 20 million immigrants now living here illegally a path to citizenship. It certainly had its critics, mostly on the right but many on the left as well. Much of organized labor took exception to the guest-worker provisions.
A bipartisan group of senators supporting the bill formed an informal caucus to help guide it successfully through Senate debate. They met every morning in a room just off the Senate chamber to discuss plans for defending the bill from amendments that would reduce its chances of passage. Then-Sen. Barack Obama asked to join in those discussions.
As an aide to McCain, I was in the room for every one of those meetings. It was my first opportunity to observe Obama closely. During those meetings, I never saw him engage in any discussion concerned with building a majority vote in favor of the legislation. In the meetings he attended, he would draw from his shirt pocket a 3x5 index card, on which he had written changes he insisted be made to the bill before he would support it. They were invariably the same demands made by the AFL-CIO, which was intent on watering down or killing the guest-worker provisions. Republicans and Democrats alike were irritated by his transparently self-interested behavior, but tried to negotiate with him. He remained adamant in his positions and unwilling to compromise.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The bill passed the Senate anyway, but was rejected by the House of Representatives. Two years later, Senate supporters tried again with a bill that was mostly authored by Kennedy and Jon Kyl, who had opposed the previous bill. McCain and Obama were then formally running for president, but they still managed to participate in the debate. McCain was an original sponsor, and his staff had helped to negotiate and write many of the compromises it contained. His position did not have much support among Republican primary voters, and his rivals for the Republican nomination attacked him constantly for it.
The bill's supporters reconvened their bipartisan caucus and daily meetings. They agreed that should any proposed amendments be unacceptable to either party's members in the group, they would all oppose them.
The only dissenter from this agreement was Barack Obama, who not only refused to oppose the amendments that would hurt the bill's chances of passage, but actually sponsored some of them. His actions were not the only cause of the immigration reform's failure to pass the Senate that year, but they certainly contributed to it.That didn't trouble Latinos in the 2008 general election. They were incensed by Republican opposition to comprehensive reform, and the incendiary language some opponents used to defeat it. Obama received more than twice the number of Hispanic votes McCain received.
Republican opposition to comprehensive reform poses a serious political problem for the GOP in the next election, which will only grow worse in the future as the Hispanic population in the United States continues to increase. I believe a comprehensive bill is in the best interests of Republicans as well as the best interests of the country. It is a practical solution to a difficult problem.
President Obama's speech Monday, like his disingenuous "support" of reform efforts in earlier congresses, is smart politics even though it hurts the cause of reform. But I never said he wasn't a smart politician. Just a very cynical one.
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Mark Salter is the former chief of staff to Senator John McCain and was a senior adviser to the McCain for President campaign.
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/05/12/obamas_immigration_reform_vision_clouded_by_cynicism_109830-full.html at May 13, 2011 - 05:23:52 AM PDT
