Rahm Emanuel has developed a reputation among District of Columbia types as being just a bit too blunt-spoken, and we got to see a trace of that on Thursday.
On the same day that President Barack Obama met with select members of Congress to try to convince them he is determined to get a legitimate immigration reform measure enacted into law, his chief of staff was making comments about how the issue will fail.
SPECIFICALLY, EMANUEL TOLD reporter-types just a few hours before the meeting that any bill presented to Congress along the general lines that Obama has suggested he supports would not have enough votes to be passed into law.
“If the votes were there, you wouldn’t need a meeting,” Emanuel told the Washington Post.
Now some people will want to see Emanuel’s comments as a stating of the incredibly obvious – there is some very vocal opposition in our society to legitimate immigration reform, and that has many political people scared into thinking they should not vote to support it.
And yes, the reason Obama was meeting with members of Congress was to start off the process of trying to persuade those scared Congressmen that there are political benefits to supporting immigration reform.
BUT BY THROWING such comments out, one has to wonder whether Emanuel is trying to ensure that nothing ever moves forward on immigration reform. Is he trying to ensure that the political process of getting the votes for a serious bill never occurs?
Or is it that he has other issues he’d rather focus attention on, and he thinks that putting the time and effort necessary to get people to vote for immigration reform is time not spent on some other project?
I’m inclined to believe it is the latter.
Emanuel, after all, is the guy who is supposed to do the “dirty work” of partisan politics that enable the high-minded, noble goals of the Obama Administration to become reality within U.S. government.
EMANUEL ALSO IS the White House aide who earlier this year was saying how immigration reform was an issue that would have to wait its turn.
The only problem is that with the growing share of the U.S. population that is Latino, this may become an issue that will not wait much longer.
Part of what the members of Congress who met with Obama were telling the president was that they have constituents who want something done, preferably this year. Waiting until future years would be perceived as a sign that the president doesn’t value the Latino population, and that could wind up having political repercussions worse than the ones Emanuel fears will happen if he gets too pushy on immigration reform too soon.
In short, this is a balancing act.
BUT AT A time when the president has to cope with a struggling economy and deal with a left-over war in the Middle East, one can argue that immigration reform is one of those issues that has become a severe enough problem that it must be considered to be just as important as either of those other two issues.
The simple fact is that this is an issue where Obama is going to displease everybody. Historians are going to be the ones who ultimately decide whether Obama was successful – because all contemporary people will find something about the Obama proposal to hate.
There are those people who believe the only immigration reform needed is an increase in deportations, along with barricades along the U.S./Mexico border. Obama may think he’s giving them a concession when he talks of increasing border security, and Democrats propose requiring some sort of fingerprint check or eye scan of all U.S. workers to help weed out people who do not have proper papers.
Yet I can already hear the objections of the far right to having everybody subjected to some sort of ID check. They’ll claim it’s just one step from issuing everybody papers, and that it is treating everybody (rather than just the people they personally don’t care for) as though they’re potentially illegal.
YET THE PEOPLE most interested in serious immigration reform (which includes acknowledging that many of the people now in this country without visas are making worthwhile contributions to the economy and should be given some legal means by which they can openly live in the United States) will hate the idea that any concession to border security is being made.
Part of the reason is that too much of the talk about border security in recent years focuses on that ridiculous wall that was erected during the George W. Bush years along parts of the U.S./Mexico border.
Everybody is going to be ticked off. Yet giving in to that belief by saying that this is an issue that should be put off until future years (if done at all) is a mistake.
The one positive aspect of Emanuel’s comments on Thursday was that he acknowledged that Democrats would benefit “politically” by doing something on the issue, even though he hinted that reform on the issue may merely be started during 2009, with completion taking place next year.
I SUPPOSE HISTORY could teach us that enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 occurred following years of political stagnation. This is going to be an issue that will take some time to do right – even though some would argue it has been ongoing for years already.
We can only hope that Obama comes to realize that if he waits too long on this issue, the harm to his legacy will be worse than what he fears the far right will do to him.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTE: Rahm Emanuel continues to talk of the difficulty of actually getting legitimate immigration reform (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062501914.html?hpid=moreheadlines) measures approved by Congress and signed into federal law.
On the same day that President Barack Obama met with select members of Congress to try to convince them he is determined to get a legitimate immigration reform measure enacted into law, his chief of staff was making comments about how the issue will fail.
SPECIFICALLY, EMANUEL TOLD reporter-types just a few hours before the meeting that any bill presented to Congress along the general lines that Obama has suggested he supports would not have enough votes to be passed into law.
“If the votes were there, you wouldn’t need a meeting,” Emanuel told the Washington Post.
Now some people will want to see Emanuel’s comments as a stating of the incredibly obvious – there is some very vocal opposition in our society to legitimate immigration reform, and that has many political people scared into thinking they should not vote to support it.
And yes, the reason Obama was meeting with members of Congress was to start off the process of trying to persuade those scared Congressmen that there are political benefits to supporting immigration reform.
BUT BY THROWING such comments out, one has to wonder whether Emanuel is trying to ensure that nothing ever moves forward on immigration reform. Is he trying to ensure that the political process of getting the votes for a serious bill never occurs?
Or is it that he has other issues he’d rather focus attention on, and he thinks that putting the time and effort necessary to get people to vote for immigration reform is time not spent on some other project?
I’m inclined to believe it is the latter.
Emanuel, after all, is the guy who is supposed to do the “dirty work” of partisan politics that enable the high-minded, noble goals of the Obama Administration to become reality within U.S. government.
EMANUEL ALSO IS the White House aide who earlier this year was saying how immigration reform was an issue that would have to wait its turn.
The only problem is that with the growing share of the U.S. population that is Latino, this may become an issue that will not wait much longer.
Part of what the members of Congress who met with Obama were telling the president was that they have constituents who want something done, preferably this year. Waiting until future years would be perceived as a sign that the president doesn’t value the Latino population, and that could wind up having political repercussions worse than the ones Emanuel fears will happen if he gets too pushy on immigration reform too soon.
In short, this is a balancing act.
BUT AT A time when the president has to cope with a struggling economy and deal with a left-over war in the Middle East, one can argue that immigration reform is one of those issues that has become a severe enough problem that it must be considered to be just as important as either of those other two issues.
The simple fact is that this is an issue where Obama is going to displease everybody. Historians are going to be the ones who ultimately decide whether Obama was successful – because all contemporary people will find something about the Obama proposal to hate.
There are those people who believe the only immigration reform needed is an increase in deportations, along with barricades along the U.S./Mexico border. Obama may think he’s giving them a concession when he talks of increasing border security, and Democrats propose requiring some sort of fingerprint check or eye scan of all U.S. workers to help weed out people who do not have proper papers.
Yet I can already hear the objections of the far right to having everybody subjected to some sort of ID check. They’ll claim it’s just one step from issuing everybody papers, and that it is treating everybody (rather than just the people they personally don’t care for) as though they’re potentially illegal.
YET THE PEOPLE most interested in serious immigration reform (which includes acknowledging that many of the people now in this country without visas are making worthwhile contributions to the economy and should be given some legal means by which they can openly live in the United States) will hate the idea that any concession to border security is being made.
Part of the reason is that too much of the talk about border security in recent years focuses on that ridiculous wall that was erected during the George W. Bush years along parts of the U.S./Mexico border.
Everybody is going to be ticked off. Yet giving in to that belief by saying that this is an issue that should be put off until future years (if done at all) is a mistake.
The one positive aspect of Emanuel’s comments on Thursday was that he acknowledged that Democrats would benefit “politically” by doing something on the issue, even though he hinted that reform on the issue may merely be started during 2009, with completion taking place next year.
I SUPPOSE HISTORY could teach us that enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 occurred following years of political stagnation. This is going to be an issue that will take some time to do right – even though some would argue it has been ongoing for years already.
We can only hope that Obama comes to realize that if he waits too long on this issue, the harm to his legacy will be worse than what he fears the far right will do to him.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTE: Rahm Emanuel continues to talk of the difficulty of actually getting legitimate immigration reform (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062501914.html?hpid=moreheadlines) measures approved by Congress and signed into federal law.
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