Posted on 07/10/2014 11:00:50 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
President Barack Obama and his aides were insistent that his trip to Texas would not be about the border crisis.
It’s become all about the border crisis.
And the way the White House approached the trip has a lot to do with why.
The surge of Mexican and Central American children at the border, some Republicans say, recalls Hurricane Katrina in that Obama isn’t making a personal trip to the border, much in the same way George W. Bush was criticized for not immediately visiting New Orleans. At the same time, they are quick to point out that Katrina was a natural disaster while this is a slow-moving man-made crisis, inadvertently exacerbated by the 2008 law signed by President George W. Bush and enforced by the Obama administration since.
But the problems the president faced as he bounced between fundraisers in Dallas and Austin were very much White House-made.
Even after Obama mentioned the more immediate humanitarian emergency as he announced last week in the Rose Garden that he was done holding himself back from attacking Republicans for not passing immigration reform, his aides deflected the idea that he might add a trip to the border to the schedule. Confronted with reporters and Republicans insisting that a stop in the Rio Grande Valley only made sense when he was going to be in the Lone Star State anyway, they pushed back harder.
Obama and his aides said they weren’t going to be driven by the optics of getting a shot of the president ambling along the border fence.
“This isn’t theater. This is a problem,” Obama said Wednesday. “I’m not interested in photo-ops. I’m interested in solving a problem.”
They were driven by different optics: attempting not to distract from the economic rhetoric that they’re road-testing for his midterm campaigning, and, above all, refusing to let Texas Gov. Rick Perry get one over on them.
The White House spent a lot of time on that last one, carefully calibrating the response Valerie Jarrett sent Perry when he said he wouldn’t settle for just a handshake on the tarmac, co-opting him into showing up at the airport in Dallas anyway and taking a ride in Marine One, giving him the one-on-one meeting that he wanted only to have Obama then use him as a prop to slice at Republicans with.
Meanwhile, Obama’s appearance to finally address the situation at length came with just two hours’ notice Wednesday, following a $3.7 billion emergency budget request and explanatory conference call White House officials held Tuesday morning, on the condition that they remain unnamed, a few hours before Obama left on the trip. By the time he showed up in front of a blue velvet drape backdrop in Dallas but could have been anywhere, the evening news broadcasts were over, the sense that he was just trying to avoid the topic already settled in.
For now, the border crisis appears less to have penetrated the larger American consciousness than become the latest edition of Washington kill-the-carrier. But already, it knocked away what Obama wanted to be focused on about immigration —that Republicans had failed to pass comprehensive reform, and that he was now going to be a leader in actually trying to fix the problem. There likely won’t be many people in Texas or anywhere else around the country who remember that or anything from the president’s touting his record on the economy when they think about this trip.
Instead, comprehensive immigration reform was relegated to, essentially, “while we’re on the topic” status, the thing that could have prevented the situation that was currently overtaking him. Obama put himself forward as trying to reason with congressional Republicans, saying he and Perry agree about what needs to be done and that the issue is just another instance of trying to get Congress to do something and pay for it.
“Congress has the capacity to work with all parties concerned to directly address the situation,” Obama said. “They’ve said they want to see a solution. The supplemental offers them the capacity to vote immediately to get it done.”
That money would boost resources for the border crisis response, such as additional immigration court judges and aid for unaccompanied minors in the care of Health and Human Services.
Congressional Republicans have not rushed to approve that request, arguing that they want more of a plan — while saying little about what that plan might be.
“This is a problem of the president’s own making,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “He’s been president for five-and-half years. When is he going to take responsibility for something?”
“He needs to work with us to get the right policy in effect, not just throw money at the problem,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday morning, speaking on the Senate floor.
But an increasing number of Republicans are demanding changes to a 2008 anti-trafficking law in order to treat children from central American nations such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras the same as minors from neighboring countries like Mexico, who can be deported more quickly back home.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) are could roll out legislation his week that would amend the 2008 law so all minors are treated equally when they are apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Nobody has told me why we treat contiguous countries and non-contiguous countries differently,” Cuellar told reporters Wednesday evening.
For his part, Cornyn has focused much of his public attention on pointing out that Obama hasn’t gone to the border, saying Tuesday on the Senate floor that “only by visiting the border and visiting firsthand” could the president understand the problems and the solutions—even though in 2011, he attacked the president for essentially doing just that. “What Sen. Cornyn is looking for, President Obama cannot deliver with another speech or photo-op,” a spokesman said at the time.
Some attention has been on the Cornyn-Cuellar bill, but there’s been no formal announcement of what’s in that bill either — or if or when it will materialize. Cuellar indicated that it could come as early as Thursday, although that appears unlikely at this point.
Undercutting the president’s plans, though, was already well underway. Thursday morning, while Obama was en route to another DNC fundraiser in Austin, Boehner’s spokesman emailed reporters with “just a reminder” that in 2010, Obama said the very kind of executive action he’s now thinking about taking on immigration reform by the end of the summer could precipitate the very kind of crisis that’s swelling on the border already.
Giving temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants or easing back on deportations made sense in terms of morality and compassion, Obama said four years and a week ago in a speech at American University, but doing so would be “unwise and unfair.”
“It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision,” Obama said then. “And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration.”
It’s politico
I’m looking for a thesis - end sentence of the first paragraph. There is no first paragraph just a repeat of the title in other words. Ditto the second paragraph just some sentence. We’re now well into nonsense.
Then in the beginning of the tired paragraph there it is. The thinly disguised theme in a non logical non structured article put out to push a non sensical theme
W
Third paragraph.
The parallels between Bush and New Orleans after Katrina, and the non-visit by the Current Occupant to the border “situation”, are striking.
If you don’t want the precedents used against you, don’t set the precedent in the first place. There is much to be said for traditional conduct of office and adherence to procedure.
No Problemo.
No problemo whatsoever.
Cloward/Pliven is alive and VERY WELL, thank you.
The left can complain as much as they want about Katrina, but Bush's main mistake was not expecting the state and local response where the leaders were an incompetent and a coke head.
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