I can get wound up about lots of things, but the immigration issue is, alas, not one. It's not that I don't care. I do. Or that I don't have firm views on the subject. I have plenty. I just don't come to the topic with hot blood and fire.
No, the presence of tens of millions of illegal immigrants doesn't drive me to distraction. I'm not opposed to normalizing most of them after, and only after, we've taken steps—security fences, ID cards, guest-worker programs, enhanced enforcement at our borders and job sites—to secure our nation in a post-9/11 age. But neither will I mouth the "we're a nation of immigrants," "give us your tired, your poor" platitudes, much less the charges of racism and xenophobia that pass for critical thinking on the other side of the debate. However noble their motives, illegal immigrants have done something, well, illegal to be here. Any normalization should take this into account in terms of penalties and back-tax payments and benefits.
So I should be a supporter of the "grand compromise" that the Bush administration and marquee Republican and Democratic senators have unveiled. After all, it's a bipartisan deal on a crucial issue. Add to this the fact that one of the deal makers is Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., one of our most impressive senators and an immigration hard-liner. I should be raring to have Congress whoosh the bill through, right?
No, and Arizona's other senator has finally got my dander up about the issue. And his presidential candidacy.
It all began when John McCain took time off from the campaign trail for a "grand compromise" news conference. "We can and must complete this legislation sooner rather than later," he said. "We all know that this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible."
In sum, McCain and some other demigods have decided, and it's time for mere mortals to get in line. Anything else is "extracurricular politics."
Never mind that the bill was not in draft form or even fully negotiated when McCain made his statement; nobody had read it because it didn't exist. Never mind that the compromise is hundreds of pages long. Or that McCain and company wanted to ram the behemoth through the Senate, outside the normal committee process, in one week. What are hundreds of pages of legislation and proper procedures when McCain has determined what's right—especially if what's right upsets the GOP base?
His "my-way-or-the-highway ... to hell" approach to policymaking is a troubling part of McCain's record, but it's not the most troubling part. His "temperament problem"—his temper—is. It turns out that this, too, was on display in the run-up to the news conference, according to The Washington Post.
Like Kyl and unlike McCain, Sen. John Cornyn had been meeting for months to work out a deal. Prior to McCain's announcement, the Texas Republican raised concerns about the number of judicial appeals that illegal immigrants would receive. First, McCain accused him of raising trivial issues (actually, his legislative term was material found in barnyards) to kill any deal. Cornyn didn't find that collegial.
"Wait a second here," he said to McCain. "I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line."
Cornyn hadn't heard anything yet. McCain answered with an expletive and then said, "I know more about this than anyone else in the room."
I'd like to know more about what's in the "grand compromise"—if there's too much amnesty and too little security—and it's good the deal's critics forced the Senate to spend more time on it. Many questions need answering. Senators need a chance to amend the bill. Heck, some hearings would be swell. The end result might even be worth supporting. Or maybe not. I'm agnostic and undecided.
But not on McCain. I don't need to know any more about him as a GOP presidential candidate. His arrogant approach to this and other legislation and his angry attack on Cornyn—a former Texas attorney general and Supreme Court justice and gentleman—simply disqualify him.
In my humble and impassioned opinion.
