The Always Wrong POTUS

The President is being slammed on parts of the Left for child cruelty. Specifically, he has been criticized for seeking to speed up deportation of Central American children crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. Granted, there’s a lot there to criticize. More recently he has asked for money to deal with the crisis, and the money is for everything from health care to transportation costs.

However, he is being slammed on the Right for causing this humanitarian crisis, and even for encouraging it. And he’s being berated for “lawlessness” because he is enforcing the law.

There’s an All In With Chris Hayes segment that explains this pretty well. There are all kinds of laws, some on the books from long before the Obama Administration, that spell out how unaccompanied minors crossing the border illegally are to be “processed” by the system, and the Obama Administration is following those laws. The Right, which perpetually rages that the President has become a “dictator,” wants him to seize dictatorial powers to break the law.

The children are fleeing violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and many are being sent here with “coyotes” by their families in the belief they would be allowed to stay. I emphasize this is a humanitarian crisis involving children. Over 57,000 migrant children have tried to cross the border this fiscal year.

And how does the Right want to respond? Deport them all, now, and bleep the law. No screening, no due process. We have no money even to take temporary care of these children, although Sen. Tom Coburn says we have plenty of money to fly them back home, on first class seats, no less. A number of communities have passed or are considering resolutions declaring that none of these children will be housed within city limits. (example)

However, having demonstrated they have no interest whatsoever in taking care of these children in any humane way, the wingnuts are slamming the President for not actually going to the border, as if that would make any difference. If he did go to the border they’d accuse him of using the crisis as a photo op.

Some of them are gleefully siting G.W. Bush’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina. But Bush’s failure was not that he didn’t go to New Orleans; it was that he was utterly oblivious to what was happening in New Orleans, and when finally did go there it was to congratulate his team, including the hapless Brownie, for their great work. And he continued to not respond to Katrina except for occasional photo op trips in which he got his picture taken wearing a toolbelt.

So no, this is not Obama’s Katrina. And Republicans had better hope Americans don’t get a close look at thousands of little children being sent back over the border, or worse, thousands of little bodies turning up in the desert.

See also Charles Blow.