Washington’s Crazies & Wimps: Both are worse
By: Dr. William Hamilton

According to the highly reliable Rasmussen Reports, the President’s approval rating is at 35 percent. Congress is even lower at 19 percent. Worse, the Gallup Poll shows Congress down at 14 percent. Do you suppose that is because the American people think neither the President nor the Congress are paying attention to their views?

For example, 80 percent oppose the Bush-Kennedy-McCain immigration bill in the U.S. Senate. Americans, by overwhelming polling numbers, want the borders and the existing immigration law enforced. Next, they want to know who is actually inside our borders. Only then, do American voters want to consider who gets to stay here and under what conditions.

Heedless of majority opinion, the President and some leftist U.S. Senators and some RINOs (Republicans in name only), are rushing head long to have it “their” way. Fortunately, those of you who have bothered to contact your U.S. Senators and the White House are having some impact. The result is increased rhetoric about improved border security.

But the basic problem is that Congress (no matter which party has been in control) has not enforced the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reforms of 1986 or the reforms enacted by the Republicans (running scared) just before they lost control of Congress in November, 2006.

Cut to the chase: S-1380 (now renamed S-1639 by Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, so he can try to revive it) the Bush-Kennedy-McCain legislation before the U.S. Senate is designed not to work. It is designed not to work because the backers of S. 1380/1639 think that the possibility of getting the 12- to 20-million illegal immigrants to go back to where they came from is somewhere between slim and none.

Those who crafted S-1380/1639 (virtually, in private) do not seem to understand that the way to stop Mexico from exporting even more of its poverty problem into the United States is to clamp down on our borders.

Moreover, many decent, hard-working immigrants come here to escape the corrupt politics and lack of economic opportunities endemic to their homelands. Ironically, the massive, unchecked illegal immigration permitted and encouraged by S-1380/1639 would, eventually, turn the United States into the kind of country they just fled.

In his recent book: “Crazies to the Left of me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve,” Bernard Goldberg tells a story about the funeral of a town’s most despicable man. Apparently, the church was filled with folks who came to celebrate the scoundrel’s death, not his life.

The pastor asked for someone to stand up and say some nice words about the departed. Again and again, the pastor pleaded with those assembled to say something good about the person lying in the coffin.

Finally, a fellow stood up in the back and shouted, “His brother was worse.”

There you have it. The perfect metaphor for what happens in Washington under either political party. And, if President George W. Bush is thinking about his legacy, his best hope may be that someone will stand up at his funeral and say, “Clinton was worse.”

And, as for the Democrat majorities in the current Congress, they may come to hope that someone will stand up and shout, “The Republicans were worse.”

With Scooter Libby yet unpardoned, with two Border Patrol agents in jail for shooting an illegal alien drug smuggler in the butt without proper paperwork, with this cockamamie amnesty push, with Attorney General Gonzales unable to fire U.S. Attorneys without creating an unnecessary flap, with no vetoes cast (as of this writing), against runaway Congressional spending, President Bush may be returning the Democrats to the long-term majorities they enjoyed for 40 years prior to 1994.

The Republicans were punished in November, 2006, not for being Republicans, but for failing to be conservatives. Ultimately, in terms of national defense, Bush 43 may rank up there with Ronald Reagan; however, right now, he’s looking like the Jimmy Carter of domestic policy.

Syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today, William Hamilton, is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and a former research fellow at the U.S. Military History Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Writing as William Penn, he and his wife are the co-authors of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.

©2007. William Hamilton.

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