Sympathy, You Should Be The Superstar, That You Are...

So if I had like ten thou readers a day and I decided I HAD to weigh in on this whole immigration thang, I'd be killing myself right now, looking for links and opinions that made sense and statistics and dollar amounts and all of that other stuff that goes with the territory when you are a Responsible Journalist...

But I don't -- and the freedom accompanying that fact allows Otto to just toss out a whole bunch of random thought about what it all means, for the GOP (who according to The King is in danger of becoming extinct) and especially for Dubya. Let's start with The Man, and get to the party later.

Contrary to Popular Opinion (that of course being whatever the national media thinks), George W. Bush is not a fool. Neither is Cheney, or Karl Rove, or anybody else in the administration. You don't get to positions like that if you're a flat-out drooler. The people who think that's so are people who have never succeeded in any corporation, or haven't tried to. In business, as in politics, you have to have some slick, sure; you have to have some dealmaking skills, sure; but at rock-bottom you've got to work hard and have some smarts. If you don't believe that, you probably DO believe that The Whole System is corrupt, man. And I would say to you -- go smoke some more grass, then. That's your choice, and I'll leave you alone...but you're still WRONG...

Thus, the President and his core team have made a rational decision to back and produce new legislation on immigration. There can be only two reasons why: 1) They believe a new approach is needed; or 2) They have made a calculation that legislation won't pass, but it is in the long-term interest of themselves and their party to back it until it fails.

I think there are a ton of things that could support position 1, beginning with Bush's ties to Tejas and his real-world observations, both as a businessman and as governor, about Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal. But something, some gut feeling, tells me that position 2 is really what's going on.

Because, first, I hear all this chatter about "Bush squandering the few pennies of political capital he has left." Well, yes...exactly. What's the difference between leaving office with four pennies in pocket, versus nothing? Again: He's no fool. There are in my estimate four Big Things that he's spent large capital on during his 78 months in office. The War On Terror, Cutting Taxes, Getting Sane Jurists on the Supreme Court, and Social Security Reform. Three of out four have been payoffs. For you non-sports types, that's a batting average of .750 -- astronomical. So why not spend it all, before you leave?

In fact...in fact...what if he'd decided that getting the country to focus on the enormous costs associated with amnesty from a Social Security/Medicaid standpoint was the best way to move the ball forward on reforming those behemoth social programs?

In fact, what if he'd decided that forcing Congress's hand on immigration would result in large, large numbers of voters getting pissed about the whole damn bunch in Washington, cleaning House (so to speak) in '08? Speaking as a movement conservative, it wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit if Hagel, Lugar, McCain, Specter, Hatch...all of these entrenched, sometime Republicans, got the boot next fall. Shake the place up a bit, eh? Term limits without the legislation, eh? A massive forest fire, to clear the way for the Next Generation of new growth, eh?

In fact, what if he'd decided to exit with an approval rating so low that ANY Republican presidential candidate who gets the nomination could bill himself as The Candidate For Change, and have the latitude to separate himself from the past administration, thereby improving his chances? Clinton left office with some gargantuan poll numbers -- and did Gore benefit?

Lastly, in fact, what if he'd decided to pick this issue as the biggest, best way to show that The Federal Government isn't really capable of that much, at least on this issue, and get people thinking about individual state solutions instead? I mean, I don't hear that many people in Montana complaining about the immigration problem. Shouldn't the southern border states be dealing with this, first and foremost? Isn't it about time that people started looking somewhere else than freakin' Washington, DC for the answers to all of their freakin' problems?

And here again, I'm sure The Dope Crowd, The Sixties Movement, would have a major issue with this approach. So cynical. So Machiavellian. So manipulative. And I would say to them: Sober up, and grow up too, while you're at it. You do stuff like this every freakin' DAY. Like, your husband wants to buy a new sports car. Instead of saying no, flat no, you go along at first...knowing inwardly that the whole purchase process will get him to focus on finances, which he doesn't get involved with otherwise, and then he'll see how he needs to get a raise in order to make the nut on the car...which he does. Is that cynical? Is that Machiavellian? Is that manipulative?

No, it's life. So, like, get one.

Again I say: History will prove out the good and great success that was the George W. Bush administration. He knew what he was doing, and he did it right. Book it. Out.