Americans, in general, are usually proud of this fact: The U.S. is a nation of immigrants. And there’s nothing we love to collectively celebrate more as Americans than a good rags-to-riches story, especially if it begins in another country.
Strike up a conversation with an acquaintance and then at some point ask where their family emigrated from, and there’s always some pride in the answer, whether they talk about family coming from Europe, Asia, South America, the Caribbean or elsewhere.
But our love affair with our collective origin story outside this country usually ends at the border — literally.
We don’t want to hear or feel the messiness of our country’s asylum system, and we collectively don’t want to be bothered with how someone gets here. But once they get here and become a citizen, we are usually very welcoming, eventually, and, yes, proud.
And this brings us to our current political stalemate over the border and immigration. In many ways, both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are acting rationally in their postures. For Biden: It’s an election year, and the last thing he wants is for the border to become an impediment to his foreign policy (the Ukraine aid linked to the border negotiations in the Senate) or his re-election. So it’s not shocking to me to see Biden essentially say, “I’ll accept just about any reasonable border idea as long as Ukraine aid is included.”
Biden has made the calculation — I think correctly — that the left won’t abandon him over the border. They may complain, they may grumble, they may even support more presidential candidates in 2028 who want to decriminalize crossing the border. But I doubt they decide to use this Biden capitulation on border policy as the moment to walk away from him. I think the Israel-Gaza situation is more fraught for Biden on the left than the border.
And it also makes perfect political sense, at least superficially, that Trump and Republicans from his wing of the party aren’t interested in “helping” Biden with either Ukraine or the border. The border issue is an important organizing tool for Trump, in particular, as well as for the GOP as a whole. Without the immigration issue as a galvanizer, it isn’t always clear what else will motivate the Trump wing to show up at the polls.
Trump manufactured concern over supposed “migrant caravans” before the 2018 midterms, and it didn’t prevent the GOP from losing a whopping 40 seats in the House. But in two key Senate races the GOP was trying to pick up, Missouri and Indiana, the caravan story seemed to do what the immigration issue has done for the GOP in the past: fire up the base.
What’s less clear, politically, is how much the border swings votes from one party to the other. A large chunk of voters who say the border is a top issue would already be voting Republican anyway (see 2018). That doesn’t mean the issue isn’t a national concern. But is it a such a concern for swing voters that it will trump their other concerns about issues, including democracy or abortion?
Now, thanks to the decision by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to transport migrants out of his state to Democratic strongholds like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, we are seeing some voter anxiety beyond the GOP base in these regions about the ability to deal with the incoming migrants. And I can be persuaded that spreading the so-called financial or housing pain of caring for these migrants has gotten more Democratic mayors and governors to complain to the White House, which in turn has given Biden the political cover he needs to basically take whatever Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and other Senate Republicans ask for in negotiations over border legislation right now.
Politically, one could say Abbott’s move was quite shrewd — but wow, it was cynical. And watching the state of Texas try to manufacture a crisis with the federal government over border jurisdiction at Eagle Pass, one gets the sense that these Texas elected officials are more interested in playing Civil War dress-up than actually working with the federal government to solve the problem.
This political theater on immigration extends to the House, where the Republican majority may do the following two acts in the next month: refuse to work with the Senate on the toughest border package to ever get Democratic agreement, and impeach the Department of Homeland Security secretary for having the audacity of serving in office for a Democratic president.
It appears Mayorkas’ biggest sin is being a Democrat and working for Biden. Every supposed “substantive” criticism of Mayorkas usually falls apart once you realize the complaint is really that he’s following the law. If the House doesn’t like how Mayorkas is running his department, then they have the power of the purse and the power to change some of the country’s asylum laws to give DHS more authority. But what doesn’t make sense is impeaching Mayorkas for implementing laws they don’t like and could change, if they actually worked on the problem.
And let’s say they successfully get Mayorkas to resign or removed by the Democratic-controlled Senate? It’s still going to be Biden and a Democratic Senate who will confirm his replacement. So, given that likelihood, what exactly does the House GOP think it’s accomplishing in impeaching Mayorkas?
The reality is that impeaching Mayorkas is easier for more moderate, “governing wing” Republicans to explain away (or even ignore) in their swing districts, as opposed to trying to explain an impeachment of Biden. It’s why the Biden impeachment efforts have died a quiet death in the House (have you noticed?). The Trump wing of the GOP, in particular, has been obsessed with tagging some Democrat with the “impeached” stamp. My guess is Attorney General Merrick Garland is next on their impeachment wish list.
Let’s be honest: The House Republicans are impeaching Mayorkas because they think they can. It’s a classic schoolyard bully trick: Don’t try to take down someone your own size (like Biden), pick on someone smaller because you can look like you are tough without actually having to risk much politically.
The GOP is divided on what to do about the border, and many of Trump’s most important supporters in Congress are openly admitting that it’s better to tank any bipartisan deal to fix the problem because doing so could help Trump win in November. In theory, given those factors, this should be setting up, in an otherwise unthinkable way, as a potential political winner for Democrats, despite their record-low ratings on handling immigration in recent polling.
I may be naïve, but I find this border debate to be quite helpful in sorting out who got elected to office to solve problems and who got elected to office simply to become politically famous. Because it’s pretty easy to divide the GOP into the governing wing (folks like Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska in the House or Lankford in the Senate) and the performance wing (see Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, who is leading the impeachment of Mayorkas).
But I’m skeptical Biden wants to own the border. In the same way that the GOP seems to want the issue more as an organizing tool than as a problem to be solved, Democrats try to ignore the issue because they don’t think it matters to their math of 50%-plus-1. And educating the voting public about the cynicism of the border debate calls for a rhetorically strong messenger to whom voters will pay attention. Right now, that’s not Biden, and it’s not Vice President Kamala Harris, who was once heralded as the West Wing’s border czar. And, frankly, it’s also not Mayorkas, who now has become a conservative media punching bag.
Perhaps a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama in their rhetorical prime could do this — both successfully used House Republicans as their punching bag en route to re-election.
Ironically, I think the political assumptions everyone is making about the consequences of tackling the border legislatively or tackling it pugilistically could be off. What if Biden gets his deal from Congress and the border isn’t stabilized by the fall? Does that mean he’s vulnerable to a “competency” attack? In pure political terms, is it better for the Biden White House to capitulate to the Senate on everything and then have the House GOP tank the compromise, giving Biden a chance to run against the GOP’s inability to govern?
You see where I’m going here: The assumptions folks are making may not be what they think. More importantly, for this democracy to continue to function, it’s important to give presidents most of the reasonable tools they ask for to deal with a crisis like this one. If they get them and they still fail to solve the problem, then the ballot box becomes the obvious place to express disapproval.
But the GOP may inadvertently bail out Biden and the Democrats here by obstructing their ability to even try to solve the problem. Congress and the state of Texas have sabotaged DHS at times; it’s pretty clear politicians like Abbott and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick see immigration standoffs as enhancements to their political future. Unless the voters start judging elected officials on their ability to attempt to solve intractable problems, we will get more of this political theater.
And make no mistake, the migrant issue is a global challenge. Since we are considered the beacon of freedom around the world, when folks are in despair, their first instinct is going to be to come to America. Personally, I’m glad and feel privileged to live in a country people want to come to and not flee. We need to be a nation of borders that follows the rule of law and has empathy for those seeking a better life. It’s frustrating to watch our elected officials not see the big picture here, especially when so many of them know better but are simply afraid of a political base that’s been misled about the border.
Danger ahead if the Trump wing of the GOP tanks the border bill?
It’s notable that in the most recent Pew Research Center poll, the two parties differed on how much they should work with the other party. A majority of Democrats (59%) say Biden should try his best to work with GOP leaders to get things done “even if that disappoints some of his voters.” Only 32% of Republicans say the same of GOP leaders about trying to “reach compromises with Biden.”
Of course, some of this is a White House effect. That is, the party that has the White House often believes it should be working for bipartisan goals, while it’s politically in the best interest for the party not in the White House to prevent the president from succeeding in a bipartisan way, all the better to galvanize your own supporters to win the next election.
For someone like me who is a results-oriented political observer, I fear that the tit-for-tat nature of our politics will continue to get worse. It’s inevitable that if Trump wins the White House in 2024, the decision by Republicans to tank anything Biden advocated will be remembered and likely weaponized against them once they try to govern.
Of course, that might be the feature, not the bug, to the GOP, as there is a growing movement on the right against governing, period. Plenty of folks run for office now promising to gum things up, keeping elected officials from being able to enact anything new. Civilized society invented politics to settle disputes without resorting to violence. Let’s not forget this, please.
Austin's power over Biden
It’s been nearly a month since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin underwent emergency surgery without properly notifying the chain of command. And around Washington, there’s a quiet shock that Austin still has a job.
We are in the middle of two proxy wars and potential escalation on a third front, and the president and top national security aides were left out of the loop on Austin’s whereabouts? It’s a fireable offense, and firing him would not have been seen as that controversial — and yet Austin survived.
Austin hasn’t been a very outspoken defense secretary. He’s done little lobbying on the Hill for Ukraine funding, leaving most of the heavy lifting to the White House and the new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown. Talk to the press corps at the Pentagon and they will lament the lack of transparency and access to civilian leadership, in contrast to the days of Panetta or Gates or even Rumsfeld.
Perhaps the White House doesn’t mind the way Austin has chosen to run the Pentagon. He’s not picking fights with the State Department or the National Security Council like previous defense secretaries. That alone could be why they chose not to act on this dereliction of duty.
But this nondecision also sent a message that perhaps Biden doesn’t want out there: that if you have a personal relationship with the president, you’ll get special treatment. It’s been widely reported that Biden’s affinity for Austin is due to the relationship Austin had with Biden’s late son, Beau. As a human, I admire that devotion from a grieving father. But he’s the president of the country, and the commander-in-chief, and once he decided to run for office, Biden chose to put the country before himself and his personal relationships. No one said being president was easy, but this appears to be a miss by Biden.
Sports diplomacy
As many of you know, I’m a big advocate of the power of sports, especially as a tool to de-escalate conflict whether within our country or abroad. That’s why I wanted to bring your attention to a recent op-ed in the Sports Business Journal, written by Travis Murphy, a sports business consultant who regularly has to navigate government entities. Murphy is calling for the president to appoint a special envoy for sports diplomacy.
With so many other countries attempting to use sporting events to wash away their inhumane policies or past, Murphy argues the U.S. has an opportunity to showcase American freedom and democracy in a way that is the opposite of the “sportswashing” attempted by countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China.
And while you might be wondering why sports should be a priority right now for the government, realize that in the next 10 years, the U.S. is going to be hosting some of the largest global gatherings on the planet: the 2026 World Cup, the 2028 Summer Olympics, the 2024 World Cup of Cricket, the World University Games in 2029, the Men’s and Women’s Rugby World Cups in 2031 and 2033, and likely the Winter Olympics in either 2030 or 2034.
What Murphy envisions with this new special envoy: “a visionary leader with the mandate to streamline whole-of-government processes around these global events. Outside of the White House, there is no office or individual in the government with the authority to convene the necessary stakeholders and cut through the extensive red tape in the way of successfully hosting these events. A Special Envoy for Sports Diplomacy would help reset the global conversation around what sports diplomacy and these global sporting events mean to us as a society and demonstrate how sports can be a force for good and opportunity for all.”
I’m including this extensive excerpt, because Murphy has persuaded me this is a good idea. In fact, I have the perfect person for this role: Mitt Romney.
He’s retiring from the U.S. Senate, he saved the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics (and the Salt Lake City-headquartered Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) from embarrassment in 2002, and he is one of the few American leaders with true bipartisan relationships that any special envoy would need to succeed. Romney, of Utah, would represent the U.S. and its values as well as any American, and he has the business background and history with global events to put together a team that will likely lead to the U.S. hosting even more global events.
Biden needs to signal to the Romney wing of the GOP (however big you think it is) that he does value working with them, and such an appointment would certainly not hurt Biden politically — it could even help.
