Joe Biden’s Death Wish

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, January 21, 2024

 

There’s a lively internal debate in the GOP about the politics of a potential immigration deal with Joe Biden.

 

Should Republicans, as Donald Trump is arguing, steer clear and let President Biden continue to bear the political costs of the border crisis? Or should they move the ball on policy as much as possible, even if it somewhat alleviates Biden’s difficulty going into the election?

 

This is a fascinating discussion, but it raises the question why Biden wouldn’t make it moot by helping himself out of his own border crisis.

 

There is no reason Biden needs to wait on Republicans to try to constrain him into enforcing the law; he could start enforcing it himself. Or to be more specific, he doesn’t have to wait for Republicans to limit his power to parole illegal immigrants into the country; he could instantly start paroling fewer people on his own.

 

Joe Biden’s border crisis, which he initiated immediately upon taking office and has allowed to reach historic levels the subsequent three years, is the starkest example in recent memory of a president engaging in wholly avoidable political self-harm.

 

George W. Bush’s presidency was blighted by the Iraq War. But Bush launched the operation on the assumption that the war would be relatively quick and easy, and once the insurgency began in earnest, there was no easy way out.

 

In contrast, Joe Biden has it within his power to end the border almost immediately — this is a crisis largely of choice.

 

Democrats hurt themselves badly with Obamacare in 2010, but it was a longtime priority that the party was willing to pay a significant political price to achieve (although they must have been surprised by how steep and long-lasting the price was).

 

In contrast, Democrats haven’t spent a generation campaigning on open borders.

 

Regardless, Biden’s standing on the border is catastrophic. In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, just 18 percent approve of his handling of the border, while 63 percent disapprove. His approval has dropped by half since the spring of 2021, and he has “the lowest rating on immigration for any president in past ABC News/Washington Post polls to ask the question since January 2004.”

 

This weakness doesn’t come in isolation, as Michael Brendan Dougherty has noted. Biden is running against a Donald Trump who has made the border his calling card from the beginning. The former president often implausibly promises to solve problems with ease, such as his pledging to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. But he will indeed, if elected again, immediately deliver a border with almost no illegal crossings.

 

There will again be a “Trump effect,” with migrants holding back out of fear that the infamous border hawk might — who knows? — drone them at Eagle Pass. Then, crossings will inevitably pick up again, and Trump will have to establish a new border regime to diminish them on a permanent basis.

 

Rarely is the choice on a policy matter so stark as that between the Biden border, nearly open as a matter of preference, and the Trump border, tightly controlled as a matter of the highest priority. If Biden loses in the fall, this contrast will be one of the reasons why.

 

There are signs that the Biden White House understands the yawning vulnerability it has created for itself. And it may be trying to reduce the flow of migrants, so long as it doesn’t have any fingerprints on it. The invaluable Todd Bensman at the Center for Immigration Studies reports that daily numbers at the border have gone down, apparently because Mexico has started cracking down on illegals after talks with the Biden administration in December; Andrés Manuel López Obrador surely fears a return of President Trump and is willing to tighten up if that makes a second term for the Republican less likely. 

 

This is progress, but why wouldn’t Biden simply return to the Trump policies that worked and take credit for ending a crisis that extends from El Paso to Chicago? He’s probably been so stubbornly opposed to doing so because a de facto open border has now entered the Left’s catechism. At this point, the thought of Biden admitting that things are out of control and Trump policies are the answer is as inconceivable as Mike Pence saying that, upon further reflection, we need a regime of legal abortion for humanitarian and political reasons, or Claudine Gay turning against affirmative action because it is corrupting the academy.

 

Republicans will have to decide what to do on a border deal, perhaps sooner rather than later. But Biden is deciding to give Donald Trump an invaluable political gift every day.