Editorial Rule 1: Words and phrases flagged in red are, in my opinion, vague, ambiguous, subject to dispute, or otherwise problematic. But for that they are not inadmissible in political discourse. As you may surmise, they are the lifeblood of such discourse.
Editorial Rule 2: Content from outside sources is a means to an end. There will be no cut and paste of content to this blog without original contributions from yours truly.
We detour in this blog from the intra-Islamic “war of ideas” to the presumptive GOP nominee for President, Senator John McCain. On Valentine's Day, the Senator appeared as a guest on CNN's Larry King Live. Not necessarily a tough interview for Mr. McCain, but as we shall see, not necessarily easy, either. Our interest in this event will be to scrutinize the Senator’s acumen in defending a sacred principle under siege in contemporary America.
Enter stage left: Larry King. His marketing ploy is the exclusive interview. The trick is to inflict the mortal wound, lest Mr. King lose the imprimatur of journalist, but not make it apparent, lest Mr. King frighten away his next exclusive interviewee. To work the trick Mr. King long ago gave up his irascibility for a more delicate stratagem of combat.
Enter stage center to right: John McCain. He is climbing the rocky path to inner tranquility. Sometimes, the impatience simmers to the surface, but the former naval airman sharply corrects his passions. And in the bargain the pluck remains. We who have not suffered in the POW camps should do so well in managing ourselves.
Yet, the trade-off for Senator McCain has been a politics of pragmatic results. His failed immigration bill illustrates the dilemma. His was not an argument in principle for the legislation; rather, his justification was rooted in an assessment that inaction was more harmful than the disagreeable outcomes of reform. Thus, the nature of the reform—the core deliberative issue—was orphaned in the crafting of the legislation. Should immigration reform protect the rule of law and the integrity of American sovereignty? Or should it assent to the supposition that America is obliged to secure human rights irrespective of citizenship-status? The Senator apparently would not choose between these fundamentally-opposed alternatives. In the legislative arena, though, one cannot avoid choice. In effect, by not choosing, he overruled one of the alternatives in favor of the other. The conservative angst in advance of the Senator’s benediction as GOP nominee should tell us which alternative prevailed in the immigration reform proposal.
But let us not judge only by this. Let us judge from an example taken from the immigration reform bill itself. The Senator’s bill proposed to levy a fine as the penalty for illegal status. For him this provision was one detail towards a compromised resolution of a grave national problem. His conservative GOP colleagues took a more solemn view of this “detail.” They had argued for some time that it would abrogate the rule of law if Congress was to grant legal status to persons who were in the US illegally. It was not in the vital aspect a matter of fairness to those who were already in line for naturalization: it was a matter of upholding the law by refusing to sanction unlawful conduct. According to the conservatives, payment of the Senator’s proposed fine would remove unlawful status and clear the way to naturalization. Hence, the penalty would violate the rule of law.
The Senator’s pragmatic bias towards action rendered him insensitive to this conservative line of reasoning. And this reaches to the question of his fitness for the Presidency. Does Mr. McCain have the sensitivity to principle upon which he can articulate a defense of the sacred rule of law? The Framers established the Presidency as a nationally-elected office. Answerable to “the people” alone, the Presidency is uniquely empowered to safeguard the good of “the people.” A President cannot protect the common good unless he or she can pierce through the cacophony of voices that is American politics with clear articulations of principle. Let us judge the Senator by his duel with Larry King as a test case. We enter the scene after Mr. King runs a video of the Senator’s unwelcome mention of illegal immigration at the recent CPAC conference:
MCCAIN: But, look, they want the borders secured first. And I understand that. And our proposal has got to be securing the borders first. The American people have no trust or confidence in us that we would secure the borders. So, I still think that we need tamper-proof biometric documents for temporary workers and anybody who hires them without them will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No one should be awarded for illegal behavior. And we've got to round up and get rid of the two million people who are in this country who have already committed crimes. But we are also a humane nation endowed with the qualities of humanity and compassion. And I'm not going to send the wife who is here illegally, of a soldier who is missing in action in Iraq, out of the country. Nor does anybody else want to do that. But the American people want the borders secured first. And that's the message. And that's what I'm going to do.
KING: Why do you think so many conservatives are so against this feeling of being kind?
MCCAIN: Oh, I think they are. I think they're humane and compassionate people. And when you sit down and discuss it with them, they understand that these are also God's children. But they also have, as all Americans do, a deep and abiding concern about this nation's security since 9/11 and they want the border secured first.
How would you rate the Senator’s comments as a defense of the rule of law? He affirms the principle broadly: “No one should be awarded [rewarded?] for illegal behavior.” But then he seems to hedge the principle in its application to illegal immigration. First, he states: “We've got to round up and get rid of the two million people who are in this country who have already committed crimes.” Is not a person of unlawful status by definition in violation of the law, irrespective of criminal acts he or she might have committed? We cannot tell how the Senator would deal with those of unlawful status who have not committed criminal acts. Next, he avers, “I'm not going to send the wife who is here illegally, of a soldier who is missing in action in Iraq, out of the country.” Few would disagree that there will be prudent exceptions to the removal of persons of unlawful status. But yours truly contends that this interview was not the place to raise the issue of exceptions. It communicates equivocation at a moment when singularity of purpose is mandatory. Current law would authorize a President McCain to deport any person of unlawful status, so if he already talks of exceptions, how confident can we be that as President he will not grant a multitude of exceptions to the enforcement of existing immigration law?
On the positive side, Mr. McCain promises to “secure the border.” This is a broad recognition of American sovereignty. But notice that he advocates border security as the “first” element of immigration reform. If he is thinking that securing the border is the least controversial aspect of reform, he would be wrong. As the days pass, it grows more contentious. There is no reason in principle why we cannot simultaneously secure the border and promulgate a solution to the status of persons unlawfully in the US. Plus, there is a strong practical argument that contentious issues should be addressed with dispatch so as to deny the opposition time to organize. We can reasonably assume that the Senator is aware of this, so we are back to suspecting his hesitancy or disunity of purpose in confronting illegal immigration.
Lastly, the denouement, a cup of steaming arsenic coffee: “Why do you think so many conservatives are so against this feeling of being kind?” The Senator sips from the proffered cup: “I think they're humane and compassionate people . . . they understand that these are also God's children.” The response is fatal because it accepts the premise laden in Mr. King’s question, namely, that the issue is not rule of law or integrity of American sovereignty but the moral qualities of those who oppose amnesty for persons of unlawful status. It was a missed opportunity to unmask this premise as the villain and enunciate a response issuing unequivocally from principle, such as:
All Americans, conservative and liberal, are humane and compassionate. That has never been the issue in dealing with persons of unlawful status within our borders. The principle of paramount interest to all Americans is the rule of law. Everything we hold dear, everything we do that is good, comes from or is made possible through the rule of law. You know Larry as well me that it is fragile: law-abidingness cannot be taken for granted. So, first and foremost, all policies dealing with persons of unlawful status within our sovereign territory have to uphold the rule of law. After all, America has been the destination of choice for immigrants the world over precisely because we are a nation of laws, not of men.