Washington Wednesday: Child of Europe

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 18th of February. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday! And joining us is political scientist Hunter Baker. He is a WORLD Opinions Contributor. 

Good morning to you, Hunter!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning!

MAST: Hunter, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke at the Munich Security Conference last weekend and his speech is being widely and highly praised for the way it outlined both the challenges and the opportunities that lay ahead for Europe and the U.S. 

Here’s a little bit of that speech:

RUBIO: Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and explorers whose names, by the way, still adorn the street signs and towns’ names all across the Mississippi Valley. Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos—the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West—these were born in Spain. And our largest and most iconic city was named New Amsterdam before it was named New York.

Now some politicians have been downright effusive about the address—it’s drawn comparisons to Churchill… to Reagan... Hunter, why do you think it’s being seen this way, and do you agree with those assessments?

BAKER: First of all, it's being seen in comparison to what JD Vance did last year, and I think that you could view Vance as maybe taking Europe to task with his address. I mean, there's a sense in which it's a similar address, almost a mirror image kind of a thing, you know, with Vance being bad cop and Rubio being good cop. 

But however you want to characterize it, Rubio was very statesman-like, and the way that he went about this address, tying the United States and Europe together, was very deeply appreciated by our European counterparts. 

And the other thing to say about it, so you mentioned Churchill and Reagan, there was really some beautiful rhetoric in this speech, you know, it does soar. It's not blunt, but there's some poetry there, and so I think that he was altogether successful.

EICHER: You know Hunter, that comparison between Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio is interesting. I thought that Rubio's was every bit as tough as Vance's, but maybe it's a stylistic thing? Kind of an iron fist in a velvet glove? There was a lot of tough rhetoric. 

BAKER: That's true, but I think that it was phrased as an invitation. Essentially, that what Rubio is doing is that he's reminding Europe who they have been. Because there's a sense, you take the word "Christendom," the word Christendom used to be essentially a synonym for Europe. You know, before Christendom, Europe is this pagan entity that would be unrecognizable to us. And so he's really reminding Europe, "this is who you are. This is where your greatness has come from." That's what's important about what he had to say. He's making an offer instead of correcting.

MAST: Well, European leaders, interestingly enough, repeatedly used the term “reassuring” to describe the speech. Let's play one more clip, we may hear the reason why:

RUBIO: So in a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish—because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.

So the speech did get a standing ovation—and yet it was also quite the challenge to Europe.

Do you think the Europeans accepted this from Rubio on the grounds that it could’ve been worse, or do you think there’s a sense that he’s won the argument and they agree now?

BAKER: So I think there's a few things going on there. First of all, that line about" the United States being a child of Europe", that's a great line, right? I mean, first of all, it's rooted in reality. We do have these European origins, and so it flatters Europe, because the United States is the greatest nation on the planet. And so we identify them as the parent of the greatest nation on the planet. And basically to say that assuming that you believe that there is some greatness that the United States possesses, some of that greatness is derived from Europe, and what Europe has been. 

And so if you're European, and especially if you're hoping for American guarantees of security, as they have for decades now, you're very reassured to hear that we're sort of tying ourselves together in terms of our destiny.

EICHER: Alright, Hunter, back in Washington, the partial shutdown still ongoing. It's not about broad budget numbers this time, it’s specifically about how immigration enforcement should be carried out.

Democrats seeking new accountability rules after the enforcement controversies in January in Minneapolis and the deaths of two people at the hands of ICE agents.

Congressional Democrats demanding judicial warrants for home entries. They are demanding restrictions on masked agents. Republicans, for their part, say that those changes would undermine the ability of  ICE to carry out deportation orders.

But Hunter, it seems to me that the real issue is the volume of cases, millions of cases. And if those cannot be handled as they were designed to be handled in Article II immigration courts instead of Article III judicial branch courts, then the mess that the previous administration created, it's going to be hard for that to be taken care of.

So given all that, and the fact that most people don't really understand even that much, do you think that the Democrats have the winning hand here? And are Republicans going to have give in on how immigration enforcement is structured and overseen?

BAKER: I think that the Republicans are going to have to make their case to the American people. I think that they have convinced the American people that illegal immigration is a serious problem. I think that they have convinced them that we have to control the border, and the American people see that happening with the Trump administration, and that's probably one of the things that they give the administration the most credit on. 

They're not prepared for the messiness of our efforts so far to deport people. So we've seen, you know, sort of a correction, of course, by Tom Homan, to go after those illegal immigrants who have committed some kind of a crime in the United States. Now that takes it down to a more manageable size, and so that will, that will improve things in the near term.

EICHER: So just thinking strategically then, do you think that the Republicans could give in maybe on an issue like masked agents and IDs for the agents, maybe coupled with some more security for them? 

Because it just seems to me, if they give in on this Article III issue in allowing these things to be adjudicated in the Article III courts, you're going to have illegals dying of old age before these cases even get to the point of being dealt with. I don't see how they give in on that and not lose the whole ball game here.

BAKER: No, I think that's right. I think that if you get to the place where you have to have a judicial warrant for every single one of these people, then effectively, you're done. You're done with really trying to deal with the deportation of the vast mass of people who have come into the country. So no, I don't think they can give in on that if that's really the priority, to move large numbers of people back to the country from which they've come.

Now you mentioned masked agents. I think that politicians on the left have dwelt on this issue of masked agents greatly to their rhetorical advantage. And I think that it's important to say something that I don't hear being said, which is, there's a reason that these men and women are wearing masks. We forget that illegal immigration is all bound up with these Mexican cartels, that there is a lot of money to be made in immigration, you know, this sort of smuggling of human beings into the country.

And so I think that the fear is that if we don't hide the identity of these people, they're going to start disappearing or being assassinated by the cartels, who are, to use Trump type language, "not very nice." 

So I think, I think that's one place where you can't give in. Body cameras—absolutely. But I think that you have to protect the identity of the agents.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, the president’s State of the Union address is a week away. This is gonna be a major opportunity it seems for the president to frame the year, whether it's the immigration issue or anything else. This is a crucial year for him, whether his party keeps control of Congress, that is on the line in just a few short months. 

What are you expecting that he’ll emphasize a week from now?

BAKER: Well, it'll be interesting to see if he chooses to showcase America 250. So here we are, we talked about this several months back. We're getting close to the big celebrations that will occur this summer, so he may take the opportunity to make kind of a sort of a feel good moment out of 250 years for the United States of America. I think that he'll address affordability. I think that every American politician is convinced that affordability is what Americans want to hear them talk about. And I think that in his case, he'll probably talk about energy affordability, you know, pumping more oil out of the ground, working to make better use out of the coal that we have available to us. You know, you may have seen him receiving his champion of coal award.

I think he'll talk about Trump RX, his attempt to help with drug affordability for the American people. I think he's going to talk about all of his trade deals and the amount of money that is supposed to be invested in the United States by other countries. I think that he will talk about revenue from tariffs, even though, as he makes this speech, it's going to be kind of an uncertain outcome, most likely with the court by that point. 

I think he's going to talk about his foreign policy wins, particularly in Iran and Venezuela. And I, we were just talking about the border, I think he's going to double down. I think there's going to be no apology from him about the border or about ICE. I think he's going to say that we need to not only do what we've been doing, but we need to do more. 

And finally, I think he'll probably tout his successes on crime. You know, the cities where he has brought in the National Guard and you've seen significant reductions in the number of crimes committed.

MAST: Well, Hunter, one last thing before we go. Civil Rights activist Jesse Jackson has died at age 84. He served as something of a bridge between the Civil Rights Movement as a member of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle, and the presidency of Barack Obama in 2008.

In 1984 and 1988, he mounted his own campaigns on a progressive platform he called the “rainbow push coalition”…of working class and ethnic minority voters. 

Here he is in 1988:

JACKSON: You must not surrender. You may or may not get there, but just know that you are qualified, and you hold on and hold out. We must never surrender! America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive!

Now Jackson never won the presidential nomination, but stayed in the arena as a public speaker. He ended up in hot water with his party after critical comments he made about candidate Barack Obama, those were picked up on a hot mic—but even that was forgiven, with Obama calling Jackson a “true giant” when news of his death broke.

Hunter, what lessons can we take away from Jackson’s political influence?

BAKER: Jesse Jackson is an important kind of bridge figure. Certainly never approached the stature or the contribution of a Martin Luther King, Jr., but somebody who wanted to be Martin Luther King Jr. I think that he modeled himself after King. I think that the reason that he went to seminary—I don't think he completed seminary—but I think the reason he went was to be like Martin Luther King Jr.

He had some of that rhetorical brilliance that King had, you know, people remember his convention speeches, Democratic Convention 1984 and 1988, specifically the you know, keep hope alive theme that he pressed. So at his best he was an inspiring figure for a lot of people. He got millions of votes in his two runs for the Democratic nomination. 

But there was also a part of him that was, he was known for kind of making threats toward large corporations in an attempt to extract large donations from them for his organizations, and that was something that was documented more and more toward the end of his career. And then when he began to be surpassed by Barack Obama, he wasn't very happy about that either.

The other thing that I think is really important to mention is the life issue. People may not realize this, but Jesse Jackson was once an ardent pro-lifer. It's one of the strange things that occurred over time in the Democratic Party was this sort of change on the life issue. I think that Al Gore, Teddy Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich, you know, there are any number that we could point to who were at one point, pro-lifers, and who changed. 

And they all had the same thing in common, which was they ran for the nomination for the presidency in that party. There simply came to be a litmus test. I think we could probably argue there's a litmus test in the opposite direction in the Republican party today, but I call it the "Planned Parenthood beauty pageant" that has to occur every time we have a Democratic nomination, and if you can't win that beauty pageant, you don't have a shot at the nomination.

MAST: Well, Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. 

Thank you so much, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

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