Mac-Coleman

2 September 2011 –

You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.

The empathetic me feels bad for President Obama. His extended family shows itself to be less than perfect. The political me sees pain for the President no matter how the deportation case for his uncle, Onyango Obama, plays out. I almost chuckle that the President’s family is the most public example of the U.S.’s twisted-to-be useless immigration policies. After all, the President’s Justice Department vigorously defends policies that allow his illegal alien uncle to defy a federal immigration court judge’s order to leave the country, commit another crime by driving under the influence, and actually think that he should have the right to stay in the country because of “compelling humanitarian factors.”

All that said, the political situation derived therefrom is not as bad for the President as either his opponents or his supporters may think. First and foremost, the President can survive the problem by staying completely out of the melee. It would be political suicide to intervene in any way. If he were to comment in any way, or if his Justice Department were to get involved even tangentially, the right could justifiably mutter impeachment. The center would be sorely tempted to abandon hope for a trustworthy President and may lend legitimacy to impeachment grumblings. The far left probably would be furious that the President would do something that even the left’s most inventive range-gate stealing could not obfuscate. There will be political damage from Mr. Onyango Obama’s adventures; but, by not doing anything, the President will move beyond the issue in the short memory cycle of today’s press and public.

If the case goes against Mr. Onyango Obama and he is deported, it might be the best thing for the President’s political standing. The left will push the position that the right got its pound of flesh in this case and that the President now knows more than anyone how our archaic and hurtful immigration laws need to be reformed. For his supporters, this injects a lesser evil into the President’s current woes. People will feel sorry for the President because he personally suffers from a lack of immigration reform. This may replace somewhat their growing feeling sorry for the President because of his political and leadership inadequacies. Such a situation will reinforce the view of immigration reform as a humanitarian, moral issue rather than how the right sees it, a moral, rule of law issue. If the uncle is deported, the issue will die soon afterward. The economy will again crowd immigration reform from the front page. Proponents of strict rule of law policies in immigration may actually have to work harder to call the ongoing situation a strategic crisis. After all, nothing hurts medical fundraising more than the rumor that a cure has been found.

If the uncle is allowed to stay in the United States, the left will have no martyr for the cause, either in the President or in his uncle. They will have won little. The right will have yet another complaint that the President acts imperially when it suits him. The festering yaw of a wound in the body politic called immigration policy will have another dirty stick pushed into it. It would be better if Mr. Obama finds himself in Kenya in short order and President Obama concentrates on the state of the economy. All my unsolicited advice notwithstanding, the President has shown an incredible knack for picking the wrong thing to do at the wrong time for the wrong reason. We shall see what happens here.