A Controversy Made to Executive Order

President Donald Trump’s executive order imposing temporary restrictions on admitting visitors and immigrants from certain certain Middle Eastern countries has kicked up quite a fuss, of course, and so far both he and his most fervent critics are looking rather foolish.

Most of the loud and anguished outrage of the left is against the very idea of imposing even temporary restrictions on admitting visitors and immigrants from any country, which is exactly the sort of leftist nonsense that got Trump elected. The arguments for unfettered immigration from countries where the more troublesome interpretations of Islam prevail are increasingly hard to make with each passing terror attack here and in Europe, and were soundly rejected in favor of Trump’s slightly less crazy rhetoric about “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what’s going on,” yet the respectable press and the rest of the loony left continues to embarrass itself in the effort. The executive order is far less sweeping than the campaign promise, and Trump seems to expect that we’ll figure out what’s going on well enough to let it lapse in a mere 120 days, and although the countries on Trump’s list conspicuously don’t include some terror-prone countries where he still has business holdings it’s also the same list the Obama administration used for its “no fly” restrictions that also restricted some innocent American citizens, and Trump is still allowing 50,000 refugees, which is less than what Obama had ordered for this year but about as much as he welcomed in while still in office, yet the left is once again invoking the Statue of Liberty and seemingly sympathetic asylum-seekers and still thinking it has a winning political issue.

Trump is unlikely to make the argument that his grand gesture isn’t really such a big deal, or that Obama wasn’t the open borders fanatic that everyone on both sides thought, but so far he’s done a surprisingly good job of not making it all about Islam. He rightly notes that past policies had admitted relatively few Christian refugees from Syria, where they were targeted for genocide, and with a similar concern for Bahais and Sikhs and other persecuted minorities the policy adheres to the unassailable and quite religiously-neutral logic of aiding those most in need, and we expect his clipped “tweets” will be more persuasive than our paraphrasing. We hope he’ll also reverse that Obama executive order that reversed the longstanding policy regarding Cuban refugees, which has resulted in several brave asylum-seekers that the left doesn’t care about being sent back to the cruelty of their homeland’s communist government, and that the left embarrasses itself trying to argue that at the same time they’re telling all those sob stories about brave asylum-seekers from the Middle East.

Even with such a half-assed measure and overwrought response and all the compelling arguments on his side, Trump has somehow managed to misplay such a winning hand. The executive order was apparently written by some high-ranking political staffers without any help from the high-ranking appointees who actually knew how to go about doing such sensible things, which is already a popular administration storyline in the press, and the result was predictably messy. Some specific language about immediate implementation meant that some green-card-holding people who had done nothing wrong wound up in airport hell as they made long-planned trips that concluded just after the order was signed, which led to some great sob stories for the press, some Middle Easterners who had bravely volunteered their help to to the American military during its recent activities in the Middle East were also affected, which also makes for a hell of a story, and all sorts of embarrassing clarifications and other retreats ensued. The exclusion from the list of all those Islamist countries where Trump still has business holdings will also be an ongoing controversy, even if it is the same list the reputedly open borders fanatic Obama used for his “no fly” list, and for the next 120 days or until our representatives figure out what’s going on there should be plenty of arguments that spring from this sort of fuss. Already Trump has fired an acting Attorney General left over from the Obama administration who objected, and it looks like he’ll have to fire a lot of other State Department employees who also object to his half-assed and almost Obama-esque measures, and the press will treat it like Nixon firing Archibald Cox, if Trump remembers that, and although his fans will love the familiar “you’re fired” shtick we’ll only be on his side until that inevitable “Saturday Night Massacre” when he fires the people insisting on the law.

We hope it all works out, but we expect that Trump and his most fervent critics and all the rest of us will wind up looking rather foolish.

— Bud Norman

The Benefits of Benefits

The president’s preferred topic of conversation today is extending benefits for the long-term unemployed, and it’s no wonder why. He’d rather the public talk about anything other than Obamacare or his ex-Secretary of Defense’s new tell-all book, and the benefits issue poses obvious political problems for the Republicans.

If the Republicans don’t agree to yet another extension of benefits for people who have been idled since the Crash of ’08 the media will eagerly caricature them as heartless top-hatted and moustache-twirling villains tying the poor to the metaphorical railroad tracks, and there are bound to be some among the 1.3 million people affected who will make for sympathetic victims in the inevitable sob stories. If the Republicans quickly cave to the president’s demand it will further enrage an already restive conservative base that suspects them of being lily-livered big government bleeding hearts, and has good reason to suspect that there are some among those 1.3 million who well deserve a quick kick off the dole. Throw in the opportunity for the president to come back from his Hawaiian vacation to prattle on about that economic equality hogwash his base so dearly loves, and it seems sure winner for the Democrats.

The best response the Republicans have come up with is to go along with the extension, but only if its $6.4 billion price is paid for with money taken from somewhere else in the vast federal budget. It won’t prevent from the networks from airing serial installments of The Perils of Unemployed Pauline on the nightly news, nor will it placate the more rock-ribbed of the right-wing radio talkers who speak for that restive base, but it is hard to think of anything better. Criticism from all corners of the media will be at least somewhat muted, which these days is the best that can be hoped for, and one can at least hope that fair-minded fence-sitters might find it no more ridiculous than the Democrats’ position.

Democratic claims that paying people to be unemployed is good for the economy are so laughable that even the lowest-information voters are likely to notice, and even the likes of CNN have noticed that the Democrats’ insistence on helping these hapless victims of the economic downturn contradict their recent claims that happy days are here again. There are still three applicants for every newly created job, according to the administration’s own spokesmen, and using that sad fact to justify another multi-billion dollar welfare program surely entails its own political risks. With only $6.4 billion at stake, a mere rounding error in the great money-sucking federal machinery, the whole affair should be long forgotten by next fall’s elections except by the 1.3 million people who were likely to vote Democratic in any case.

— Bud Norman