THE BATTLE OF THE BORDER

Rich Galen


It is one thing for Republicans to point fingers
at President Barack Obama. It is something
else for a Democrat to point a finger at Barack
Obama.
Henry Cuellar is the Democratic Congressman
from west Texas. In fact his district, the 28th,
runs from San Antonio about 7,271 miles
south, southwest along the Mexican border.
When you talk about America's border
problems, you are talking Henry Cuellar's
problems.
You might have read that President Obama is
on another fund-raising trip. This time to
Colorado and to Texas.
It was suggested that the President, as long as
he was going to be in Texas and all, might
want to make a trip to the border to see what
all the hoo-hah is about.
This suggestion was made by Henry Cuellar.
After he saw photos of the President playing
pool and drinking beer with Colorado
Governor John Hickenlooper during the
Colorado segment of his trip.
Cuellar said on Fox News that the President
should zip on down to the border while he's in
Texas. The Dallas Morning News reported that
Cuellar said:
"He can get on Air Force One, be there in a
half an hour ? right after he finishes his
fundraising in Texas"
You don't need a PhD in political science to
understand why the White House doesn't want
the President physically anywhere near the
issue of unaccompanied children storming the
barricades.
They know that while the President's position
on immigration generally might be popular
with many Americans, but his apparent
paralysis in stemming the tide of tens of
thousands of children illegally entering the
United States is not helpful to his already
dismal job approval ratings.
The Obama Administration is as close to total
paralysis as any Presidency since Richard
Nixon's Watergate days.
The IRS, the Department of Veterans Affairs,
the Middle East? you name it and the President
is ignoring it.
The last time there was an issue like the Battle
of the Border, was the British Petroleum oil
spill.
The White House made a big deal of sending
the Secretary of Energy who, as it happened,
was a nuclear physicist not a chemist, a
oceanographer, nor a geologist.
It took James Carville - JAMES CARVILLE - to
light a fire under the White House to get the
President to go to Louisiana.
Carville said, on ABC News:
"Man, you got to get down here and take
control of this, put somebody in charge of
this thing and get this moving. We're about
to die down here."
According to the Los Angeles Times , Texas
Republican Senator Ted Cruz did his James
Carville imitation saying,
"Apparently there's no time [for Obama] to
look at the devastation that's being caused
by his policies."
Which is another example of one of my
favorite sayings: No matter how good your
cause, there is always someone who agrees
with you that you wish didn't
Remember the agony that George W. Bush
went through when he had Air Force One fly
over the damage done by Hurricane Katrina?
He never fully recovered from that decision.
Obama made that same mistake in 2010 with
the BP oil spill and he's making it again in 2014
with the Bebé Border Crisis.
There is a growing suspicion in our Nation's
Capital that President Obama is more-or-less
playing out the string. His administration has
until January 20, 2017 to go.
He is likely to spend the majority of that time
with a House and Senate in control of
Republicans. His attempt to reinvent American
foreign policy is a failure. And his signature
domestic accomplishment - the ACA - is
limping along costing far more to insure far
fewer people than promised.
Kudos to Henry Cuellar for calling BS on the
President's refusal to do a side trip to, at a
minimum, show the American people he at
least pretends to care about the Battle of the
Border.