President Obama got most everything he wanted in the Supreme
Court’s ruling on the Arizona immigration law. But getting most
everything he wants isn’t enough for Obama. For him, it’s an all or
nothing proposition with no room for compromise. Mick Jagger and
Keith Richards’ sage advice, “You can’t
always get what you want. But if you try sometimes well you might
find you get what you need,” won’t suffice for Obama – choir or no
choir. To paraphrase the late Freddie Mercury,
“He wants it all and he wants it now.”
The Supreme Court, of course, upheld the Arizona law’s most
controversial provision which would allow state and local
enforcement to verify the immigration status of an individual whom
they have a reasonable suspicion is in the country illegally. This
did not please the President who, when responding to the high
court’s ruling,
stated, “No American should ever live under a cloud of
suspicion just because of what they look like.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time President Obama has engaged
in racial demagoguery while besmirching law enforcement concerning
this legislation. During a town hall meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa in
April 2010, Obama
told his audience:
But you can imagine, if you are a Hispanic American in Arizona
— your great-grandparents may have been there before Arizona was
even a state. But now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers and
you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be
harassed. That’s something that could potentially happen. That’s
not the right way to go.
Does President Obama honestly think that Arizona state troopers
are going to stake out every Baskin-Robbins along I-17? If they did
then how would they christen such a task force? Operation Rocky
Road? But what else can we expect of a President who publicly
accused the police department in, of all locales, The People’s
Republic of Cambridge, of “acting stupidly” after arresting his
friend from Harvard University? Or for that matter described
Trayvon Martin like the son he never had?
Yet when the Obama Administration filed suit against Arizona
there was no mention of racial profiling in their complaint. When
Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’ Face the Nation, asked
Attorney General Eric Holder in July 2010 why this was the case,
Holder
replied:
We’re going to go out with what we thought was our strongest
initial argument and to focus on what we thought the most serious
problem with the law as it now exists. Doesn’t mean if the law, for
whatever reason, happened to go into effect that six months from
now, a year from now, we might not look at the impact the law has
had and see whether or not there has been that racial profiling
level and if that was the case we would have the tools and we would
bring suit on that basis.
When Holder talks about “our strongest initial argument” what he
really means is that the Obama Administration had no evidence to
support their argument that the Arizona immigration law would lead
to racial profiling. Moreover, if that provision of the Arizona law
went into effect they would still need to investigate “whether or
not there has been that racial profiling level” to warrant further
legal action. In other words, when the Obama Administration filed
its lawsuit against Arizona, it had bupkis where it concerned
racial profiling. Not that the Obama Administration would let a
lack of evidence of racial profiling get in the way of its dogged
pursuit of demagoguery. But for the time being it appears
that the Obama Administration will simply be content not to enforce
the law.
So the next time President Obama says that the Arizona
immigration law forces Americans to live under a cloud of suspicion
because of what they look like, he ought to be asked why his
administration didn’t make that argument to the courts. He ought to
be asked that question because the federal government made the
exact opposite argument. It argued that the Arizona immigration law
would put a strain on the resources of ICE because it interpreted
the Arizona law to mean that any person arrested in Arizona
would be required to have their immigration status checked.
Federal District Court Judge Susan Bolton agreed with the federal
government and blocked several contentious portions of the Arizona
immigration law in August 2010. All of which would bring us to our
present state of affairs. As I
wrote at the time:
If, in fact, it was Arizona’s intention to check the immigration
status of every single person they arrested, then I would argue
that Arizona would be doing the very opposite of racial profiling.
Yet somehow I don’t think critics of S.B. 1070 would be inclined
towards such generosity.
President Obama is certainly not inclined towards such
generosity. Aside from spending us into insolvency, the only two
other things President Obama has dispensed generously to the
American public is demagoguery and disingenuousness. A most potent
and dangerous mix indeed.
