Obama’s long game begins now
The US president seems finally to have accepted the reality that the Republicans are going to criticise him, often in borderline- slanderous ways, no matter what he does
In America, the weeks since Election Day have been marked by predictable calls for bi- partisanship and swift, equally predictable, moves by both US President Barack Obama and his Republican opponents that highlighted the hollowness of that rhetoric. After one contrite- sounding, post- election news conference, Obama came out swinging, making moves on climate change and immigration that he knows will infuriate Republicans. One can make the case, though, that the US president is looking beyond the political battles of the moment, making pre- emptive moves to secure a legacy. Viewed that way, the current argument over immigration may be only a taste of what the next few months have in store.
This month’s election moved control of Congress, where getting anything done was already close to impossible, even more firmly into the hands of Obama’s opponents. Some commentators have argued that full Republican control of the House and Senate will give the GOP an incentive to work with the president, but anyone who really believed that on the morning after Election Day ought to have been disabused of the notion by now. The new Congress’ Republicans are collectively even further to the right than their predecessors and few of them see any reason to compromise with an unpopular president.
Last week’s commotion over immigration reform is instructive, offering what may turn out to be a preview of the next two years in microcosm.
Illegal immigration is an issue that animates the bases of both political parties. By most estimates there are around 11 million people living in the US illegally. Republicans firmly believe that a failure to “control the borders” ( by which they mostly mean America’s border with Mexico) represents both an economic and a security threat to the country. For most Republicans, the solution to this is simple: Deport them all. The fact that this is probably physically impossible and definitely politically counterproductive matters little. The result is a lot of GOP rhetoric that sounds racist to non- Republican ears and an opportunity for Democrats to secure the votes of the country’s fastest- growing minority group.
This is not, however, an automatic win for the Democrats. They see the growing numbers of Hispanics as a source of political strength, but are hampered by a perception that the Obama administration has told Hispanics what they want to hear at election time without actually doing very much once in office.
This is the background for last week’s announcement that Obama would allow millions of illegal immigrants to receive work permits and remain in the US. To the fury of Republicans everywhere, Obama accomplished this using what is known as an “Executive Action” — essentially by issuing instructions to the bureaucracy about how to interpret and enforce existing laws. The weakness of such a move is that it has no force of law. Obama, or any future president, can change the policy at any time.
This, however, is where the political calculation comes in. Obama is counting on the passage of time to make rolling back his policy politically impossible.
Same calculus
In 2012, Obama suspended deportations of illegal immigrants brought to the US as children. By the time he leaves office in January 2017, that policy will have been in place for nearly five years. Even a newly- elected Republican would probably think twice about immediately starting deportation proceedings against hundreds of thousands — possibly millions — of young people. The same calculus applies with the work permits that will become available under the new immigration policies.
All this makes sense on another level too: Obama seems finally to have accepted the reality that the GOP is going to criticise him, often in borderline- slanderous ways, no matter what he does. That being the case, he may as well aim high. The dozen or more Republicans planning to seek the presidency in 2016 all plan to, essentially, run against him ( rather in the way that he and all the other Democrats in 2008 ran mainly against the soon- to- be- ex- president George W. Bush). In Obama’s own party, Hillary Clin- ton may end up questioning bits and pieces of the new policies or their implementation, but she is unlikely to do anything that undermines them in any fundamental way ( the same goes for any Democrat who may challenge Hillary).
Make no mistake, we are in for a long, brutal political season. As Obama fights to mark off his legacy, Republicans, who have never shown him any deference, can be expected to continue to attack him in ways that not long ago would have been considered inappropriate. The party’s bigger lights, the ones thinking about running for president, may be a little more reserved in tone, but are no more likely to offer compromise. If there is any small consolation to be derived from the events of the last two weeks it is this: The bipartisanship that both sides talked about on the day after the vote was always an illusion. Now, at least, we are back to politics as usual, with no one in Washington seriously pretending otherwise.
Gordon Robison, a longtime Middle East journalist and US political analyst, teaches political science at the University of Vermont.