The poisoned well in Washington

The chatter in the news is that the president, by issuing executive orders to defer deportation action on 5 million illegal aliens, has “poisoned the well” in his relations with the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Congress.

According to a Homeland Security website, these executive actions will “crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay taxes in order to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation.”

But the president’s action effectively prevents any movement on the issue from Republicans in the House of Representatives, which would legitimatize and encourage this unconstitutional use of what is essentially executive legislation. The Republicans have other reasons not to trust this president as a reliable constitutional player: He is pledging more border agents and vigorous deportation of new and recent border violators, but this is a president who enforces just whatever laws he pleases whenever it pleases him.

Of course, “the well” has a history of poison on both sides. President Obama views the 2013 GOP-instigated government shutdown as a maneuver just as beyond the pale politically as the Republicans see his executive orders, and it was something he could not allow to become standard practice for his opponents.

And it’s not as though the immigration question hasn’t come up until now. A bipartisan Senate majority passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in June 2013, but Republican leadership in the House has blocked it from coming to the House floor for a vote. The president’s complaint in his Las Vegas remarks is understandable: “Just call the bill. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.”

If Obama thinks his actions are, as he claims, perfectly legal and that all the Republican constitutional objections are just political bluster, then he may just be pushing for a big legacy accomplishment. But if that’s his goal, it was counterproductive for him to close his address to the nation on Thursday by calling opponents of the Senate bill racists:

“We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in, and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.”

Perhaps he does not actually want an immigration deal but only an immigration issue to drive more Hispanic voters to the polls for Democrats in 2016, taking revenge for his recent electoral drubbing.

God, who gives us government, also instructs people of all stations in life to deal truthfully with each other (Exodus 20:16). Governing is more than just the exercise of constitutional powers. Apparently the proper working of our republican system depends in part on healthy relations across the branches of government and across the partisan aisle, relations built on honest dealings, trust, and mutual respect.