This is the biggest news of the day, and possibly the biggest news on the domestic front since the Affordable Care Act. But what makes it news is not the action. Proportionately, it is no bigger than what other presidents, of both parties, have done. What makes it news is the craziness of the reactions from the right-wing and the decision to not run the speech by the major networks. We live in a world in which the reactions are more newsworthy than the action itself.
First, FYI, at the Whitehouse Blog are transcripts and links to the video of the President's speech. (In case you missed it ...)
How the media got it wrong ... if they got it at all
Here is the reaction from NY Times in an editorial statement masquerading as a news report.
President Obama chose confrontation over conciliation on Thursday as he asserted the powers of the Oval Office to reshape the nation’s immigration system and all but dared members of next year’s Republican-controlled Congress to reverse his actions on behalf of millions of immigrants.
Are you effing kidding me? Choosing "confrontation over conciliation"? This is a classic GOP reframing ploy. And from the Times? Shame.
That's the good news. The bad news, for the media and the country, is that the big networks chose not to show the speech at all. (I did my viewing with Rachel Maddow.) John Nichols at The Nation blasts those networks.
How has the American circumstance so decayed in a nation that once so well understood the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's observation that "democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's [and women's] enlightened will"?
There's plenty of blame to go around. But let's start with broadcast media that are so indefensibly irresponsible that television networks cannot take time away from their relentless profiteering to present a short address by the president of the United States—an address announcing an executive order on an issue that is universally recognized as consequential and controversial.
ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox—four major broadcast networks—all declined to interrupt prime-time programming to air President Obama's Thursday evening address on immigration policy. Though cable news channels, public television stations and Spanish-language stations cleared time for the president's speech, the big broadcast networks stuck with fare such as The Biggest Loser.
The absurdity of the choice made by the networks was only heightened by the fact that the network-aligned local television stations that were set to broadcast entertainment programs rather than the president's address just pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars for airing the slurry of negative campaign commercials that have become the crude lingua franca of our politics. A good many of those commercials focused on the issue of immigration. And the stations that aired those ads would gladly accept more cash from groups seeking to attack or embrace the president's position.
The result is a democratically dysfunctional imbalance where viewers of the major broadcast networks and of local television stations that carry their programming can get more information from paid political advertisements about a policy than from the policymaker himself. And forget about honest debate, even in the constrained form of a presidential address followed by a response from the leader of the opposition.
The first televised address by an American president was a 1947 request by Harry Truman that Americans consume one less slice of bread each day in order to free up grain for post-war Europe. Since then, presidents have used primetime access to explain nuclear policy, announce invasions, advance civil rights, promote energy conservation, ponder the ramifications of stem cell research and warn about the threat posed by the military-industrial complex. Not every address has been dramatic, and some have been self-serving. Most would have benefited from a response by an opposition leader. But all were aired by the broadcast networks as part of the duty to the American people that goes with surfing the public airwaves.
So, too, was a 2006 address by then-President George W. Bush on immigration policy.
"In 2006, Bush gave a 17 minute speech that was televised by all three networks that was about deploying 6,000 national guard troops to the border," a senior Obama administration aide griped to Politico. "Obama is making a 10 minute speech that will have a vastly greater impact on the issue. And none of the networks are doing it.
The GOPlins threaten to take up arms
Well, almost. Some of them are threatening shutdown, withholding funds, blocking Presidential appointments, impeachment, and even predicting civil unrest and violence. It's almost like wishful thinking on their part. Here's a summary from AZBlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona.
The cooler heads admit that Obama has the legal authority to do what he said.
Sam Stein reports that even the vanguard of conservative lawyers, The Federalist Society, says that the president is acting well within the executive discretion given to him by U.S. immigration laws and legal precedents.
But it goes downhill from there.
What President Obama is doing is similar to what a judge would do with a deadlocked jury — he is issuing a Dynamite Charge, telling Congress to go back and try harder to reach a bipartisan agreement on immigration reform to break this political stalemate. This is a clarifying moment for Tea-Publicans in Congress.
President Obama has repeatedly said that he wants a bipartisan and comprehensive immigration reform bill, and if it reaches his desk he will sign it. The president has also said that he will rescind the executive orders he is about to sign in the next day if only Congress were to send him a bipartisan and comprehensive immigration reform bill.
What Congress should do is what any rational, right-minded individual would do, and send a bipartisan and comprehensive immigration reform bill to the president for his signature. As luck would have it, there already is a bipartisan and comprehensive immigration reform bill that overwhelmingly passed the Senate in July 2013. We have been assured repeatedly by leaders in the House that there are sufficient votes to pass this bill in the House if only the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, would allow it to come to a vote.
So hey, NY Times, the conciliation already happened. Boehner is the guy you should be blaming for the confrontation.
AZBlueMeanie asks:
Is the modern-day Tea-Publican Party capable of sound public policy and governance? Or is it just an echo chamber for the most deranged demagogues of the conservative media entertainment complex?
We are about to find out in this clarifying moment in history.
I would not bet on the outcome. Here is why: a summary of some of the GOPlins' threats also from AZBlueMeanie:
... will this craven coward [Boehner] cave under pressure from the dangerous demagogues of the conservative media entertainment complex, and pursue a destructive path by filing a frivolous lawsuit, as supported by Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar; or defund government agencies that would enforce the president’s executive orders, as supported by Arizona Reps. Matt Salmon and Tent Franks; or engage in political retaliation against Democrats as proposed by Senator Ted “Calgary” Cruz Block Obama’s nominees, Cruz urges ; or take the country hostage again by failing to pass spending bills and shut down the federal government until the president capitulates to their ransom demands; or give in to the worst desires of those afflicted with Obama Derangement Syndrome and pursue impeachment in the House, as Arizona’s Rep. Salmon has suggested?
And then there is this really loony tune from US Senator Tom Coburn:
“The country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” Coburn said on Capital Download. “You’re going to see – hopefully not – but you could see instances of anarchy. … You could see violence.”
Is Coburn suggesting armed insurrection against the federal government over lawful executive orders with which he and the right-wing disagrees, i.e., “Second Amendment remedies”? Would this violence be directed at people who appear to be Latinos, American born or otherwise?
It really is almost like Coburn wants it to happen. Has a US Senator ever been convicted of incitement to riot?
On the other side, there are some cooler heads among the local Tea-publicans.
A group of Arizona Republicans and business leaders on Wednesday urged Congress to act on immigration even as President Barack Obama is poised to take executive action to shield millions of people in the country illegally from deportation.
Members of the advocacy group include state Sen. Bob Worsley, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith and Barry Broome, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.
Worsley said the Arizona effort is part of a nationwide push to tamp down anger among GOP members of Congress and channel it toward reform instead. He noted comments from some Arizona Republicans he viewed as counterproductive.
“Our Republican Congressional delegation has been getting a lot of national press on their comments,” Worsley said, “and it’s not been on solving the problem, it’s been ‘how do we punish or reverse what he’s doing.’”
Worsley said a better reaction for Republicans would be to sidestep Obama’s actions by passing a GOP immigration bill fixing the nation’s broken system.
Of course. But that's been Obama's position all along. The do-nothing congress, the House, more precisely, has balked at doing anything all along.
So, place your bets.