President Obama's Self-Imposed Immigration Dilemmas, Pt. 1

By Stanley Renshon on September 10, 2014

It is an article of faith and certainty among liberals that the Barack Obama is "the smartest guy ever to become president." Less well know is that this view, "that Obama is one of our smartest presidents," has also found a foothold among some thoughtful informed scholars on the right, like Max Boot.

There is no doubt that the President Obama is smart in the conventional understanding of that term. He is able to engage the factual and conceptual complexities of the issues that the country faces. He is able to grasp the alternative formulations of a problem and their implications. And, he can as well, be an articulate spokesman for the policies he prefers.

Regrettably, while being "smart" is an important and useful attribute for any president, it is not the same as being effective, successful, or having good judgment.

The problem for smart presidents, like Mr. Obama, is that intelligence does not exist in either a psychological or political vacuum. Psychologically, intelligence is encased in a president's underlying character — the level and nature of his ambitions, the commitments that guide his identity and his fidelity to them, and, of course, his understanding of the political and policy issues that he faces and his views on what to do about them.

What has been clear about this president for a very long time is that while every president is ambitious, few are like Mr. Obama, who seeks to be -- and sees himself as being -- historically "transformational". Incremental leadership just won't do for such a president; only grand history-making policies will suffice.

President Obama's first major political misjudgment on assuming office with a filibuster-proof majority in both houses of Congress was no accident. He chose to go all out for a sweeping and controversial healthcare bill that he was sure would be the foundation of a vast historical legacy.

The president promised immigration reform in his first two years, but when faced with a choice between a surely achievable major success, immigration, and one that promised him a seat at the table with other presidential "greats", he chose to jettison his immigration promise in favor of his legacy.

The president got his "historic" healthcare bill, but it has not turned out to be the legacy-ensurer that he had expected. The bill passed over the strenuous objections of the Republican Party, not one member of which voted for it. The president pushed for passage of the bill in spite of the results from a special election in Massachusetts that resulted in the election of a Republican senator who ran on a platform of opposing the bill, and won. That showed that the public was very anxious and ambivalent about the president's initiative, but he plunged ahead anyway. He then pushed to get it passed by whatever means necessary and that meant using an obscure parliamentary maneuver.

In the end, the president got his bill, but it is doubtful that he will get the legacy he assumed would be attached to it. Worse, for his immediate political and legacy concerns, his party lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections and with it the ability to pass legislation, including immigration, at will.

Still, the president's party controlled the Senate and after the president's reelection in 2012, a number of Republicans were panicked about their electoral performance with "Hispanics", a fear fiercely fanned by Democrats and their allies.

As a result, the president's decision to allow his legacy dreams to trump bipartisan policy seemed like a coolly executed and successful finesse, especially when, with the help of select group of Senate Democrats and Republicans, the president still had an immigration victory in view. The high point was passage of the massive and misleading Senate immigration bill in 2013.

The president had cleverly, it seemed, prepared the country for its passage by trying to pull off one of the most audacious policy slights-of-hand in recent memory — passing himself off as an immigration enforcement hawk.

It was his second major immigration policy error. And it, too, was avoidable.

Next: President Obama's Self-Imposed Immigration Dilemmas, Pt. 2

 

Topics: Politics