Bush to send troops to the border?

In case anyone wasn’t sure yet, this settles it. Bush is more of a craven political hack than Clinton ever was. Clinton “triangulated,” cherry-picking ideas from both the left and right then packaging them together in such a way that both sides got enough of what they wanted for a piece of legislation to pass. The Fringies on both sides howled in protest, but America flourished and Clinton sailed out of office with public approval ratings in the high sixty percents.

That’s called governing, folks. It’s making politics work for America.

On the other hand, Bush lacks the political will and, by all available evidence, even any interest in forming any kind of popular or political consensus to guide his actions. He is a unilateralist in the truest sense of the word. Whereas Democrats are criticized for liking to throw money at any problem, W likes to throw the warm, fleshy bodies of America’s youth (the poor ones, anyway) at problems.

So now that his lack of leadership has resulted in yet another insurmountable political boondoggle (Social Security overhaul, Iraq, Katrina, Harriet Meiers, this list could go on forever), Bush is doing what he does best – staunching his political hemorrhaging by throwing troops at it.

On the plus side, these will be thousand of America’s kids that won’t be sent to the meat grinder that W has made out of Iraq, and I am grateful for that. I imagine guard duty at the Mexican border will actually be a pretty cool gig for our young men and women. Pacing the desert in scorching tedium every day, Spring Break-level partying every night. You’re only young once…

On the downside, who besides Lou Dobbs, the Minutemen and the White Aryan Resistance thinks this is a prudent allocation of troops at a time when even the pundits at Fox News are bemoaning the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan have taxed American troop strength to its breaking point.

Moreover, Bush is deploying our dwindling National Guard reserve to “protect” our southern border from the threat of cheap labor just when hurricane season is starting up.

That’s called not governing. It’s political hacksmanship at its most naked, short-sighted and despicable. It’s making politics work against America’s best interests.

The terrorist cabal – Osama, Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rove and Condi – wins again.