May 4, 2006
Who Really Sabotaged the Immigration Bill? Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 10:30 AM EST John Steele Gordon plays by a strange set of rules. He has, in the past, suggested that I am “nasty, humorless, morally self-congratulatory, and intellectually dishonest.” But when I proffer that he has “spun” the recent history of the immigration reform bill still pending in Congress, he shakes his fist with moral indignation and writes: “The use of the word ‘spin’ in this context is not a word one historian should use regarding another historian’s presumptively honest opinion, unless he means it as a deliberate insult and has not the courage to do it directly. The word inescapably implies a lack of regard for the truth. If Mr. Zeitz wishes to accuse me of what would be professional malfeasance, he is free to do so in so many words. I hope he will provide at least a soupçon of evidence to back up his statement.” Okay, I’ll take the bait. Mr. Gordon has been dishonest with his readers in the service of scoring a point. Let me provide a soupçon of evidence. In his recent post, Mr. Gordon quotes the following line from a New York Times editorial: “the Democrats’ motives were undoubtedly less than pristine.” But Mr. Gordon neglects to quote the lines that immediately followed: “But Democrats also had a lot to worry about. The House had already passed a hard-line bill that would make the current immigration situation worse on every possible front. It’s not surprising that some Democrats wanted some sort of guarantee that the bill the Senate was to send out—which was already very much a compromise—would not be watered down further.” What Mr. Gordon has done here is quote a source wildly out of context. This is a very serious manipulation of the historical record. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it malfeasance. Just good old-fashioned spin. Less deliberately, but no less problematically, Mr. Gordon suggests that he can prove that Democrats, not Republicans, scuttled the immigration bill. His prized evidence: quotes (and newspaper accounts of quotes) from the Republican Senators John McCain and Arlen Specter. Should we be surprised that two Republican senators (one of them a probable candidate for his party’s presidential nomination; the other a moderate who has only a tenuous hold on his committee chairmanship due to conservative intraparty opposition) lay the blame for legislative gridlock with the Democrats? If I muster up a few quotes from Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer claiming that Republicans were to blame for the breakdown of the Senate compromise, I will hardly have proved conclusively that Republicans were at fault. Though in this instance, Mr. Gordon hasn’t deliberately tailored a quote, as he did with the New York Times editorial, he has offered up biased sources and uncritically allowed them to establish historical record. Again, this isn’t malfeasance. Just spin. In his defense, Mr. Gordon does quote honestly from a Washington Post editorial that lays the blame for legislative gridlock squarely with the Democrats. But editorials are, by definition, statements of opinion. The Washington Post piece certainly helps his argument, but alone it proves nothing. So let’s see what the experts say. An article dated mid-April in Congressional Quarterly, a nonpartisan news outlet that is arguably the leading authority on congressional matters, explained the meltdown like this: “Even with a bipartisan compromise in hand, the Senate rejected a sweeping overhaul of immigration policy last week and instead left Washington for a two-week recess caught up in a political stalemate that threatens to sink one of the biggest issues facing Congress this year. Republicans defeated an attempt April 7 to invoke cloture, or limit debate, on the compromise proposal that had been hailed as a ‘huge breakthrough’ a day earlier by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The vote was 38-60. Democrats then returned the favor, blocking, 36-62, a GOP effort to limit debate on the underlying bill (S 2454), which would stiffen border security and immigration enforcement without addressing the status of the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States.” In other words, moderate Republicans and Democrats reached a compromise agreement that included new border-control measures and limited amnesty for many, tough not all, illegal immigrants; in turn, conservative Republicans (joined by many of their moderate colleagues) tried to renege on the agreement by loading it down with amendments. When the Republican caucus then attempted to secure a vote on a bill that tightened borders and restricted the inflow of immigrants, without addressing amnesty for America’s 11 or 12 million illegal immigrants, Democrats said ‘no.’ Democrats didn’t scuttle a deal on immigration reform. They scuttled a bill that provided only for immigration restriction. They insisted that the terms of the compromise to which they had just agreed be honored. As CQ put it: “The breakdown came just a day after the two leaders stood together with more than a dozen senators from both parties, praising the broad outlines of a compromise. The plan, based on a proposal by Republicans Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida, would strengthen border security, create a temporary guest worker program and provide a path to U.S. citizenship for most of the illegal immigrants already here. The floor impasse pits Republicans who want to offer amendments to the compromise against the deal’s Democratic supporters, who want to preserve the language as it stands.” I’ve never claimed that the Democratic party enjoys a monopoly on virtue. But a more liberal immigration policy has long been a central goal of the center left—it was, after all, a coalition of northern Democrats and liberal Republicans that pushed through the 1965 Hart-Celler act, which ended a half-century of draconian limits on immigration. To be fair, labor unions and some left-leaning populists have historically been less than pristine on the immigration question. But we’re talking about the year 2006. Democrats have united in favor of amnesty for millions of hard-working undocumented immigrants. Republicans are split, and they tried to renege on a deal. Undeniably, today’s most obnoxious nativists happen to be clustered on the political right. The record speaks for itself.
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