Hello, Russert Watchers, I'll be your guest host this week. It's my first time doing this, so take it easy on me. If you think I missed something or got something wrong, by all means, go at it in the comments. Let's get started. You can read the transcript of this week's Meet the Press here and watch the show here.
At the top of the show, Russert announces that Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Sen. Chuck Hagel will be on to talk about immigration and the FBI raid of Rep. William Jefferson. He also says there will be excerpts from an "exclusive NBC interview" with Nouri al-Maliki, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, and a reporters' roundtable. For some reason (perhaps they ran out of time), the interview with al-Maliki never shows up (which is too bad, because I would have loved to hear questions about this), but Russert never addresses it. So we've got Sensenbrenner, Hagel, and the roundtable. All in all, the show was wide-ranging, and I thought that with one notable exception -- news about the results of two military investigations into the killing by US Marines of up to 24 Iraqis in Haditha last November -- he touched upon and fairly addressed the big political stories of the week. As a result, this post will mostly just be recap.
Many of you are no doubt wondering why, once again, Russert has decided to pit two Republican congressmen against each other to constitute a debate. In an important sense, this is somewhat defensible in this case, since Hagel has been instrumental from the start in crafting the Senate immigration bill that passed last week. He is typically sharp, articulate, and forthright. But of course, a large number of Democratic senators were also integral to the process of crafting and passing the Senate's bill -- most notably, Ted Kennedy -- and it would have been nice to see the face of a Democratic member of the Senate on the show today. The result is that the immigration debate largely loses its moral dimensions -- the concerns over the border deaths of people trying to come into the US, the way in which illegal immigrants are being demonized by many on the right, how the current guest worker program has been used by some employers to exploit immigrants, and on and on. Conservatives, for their part, claim to have moral concerns over immigration as well, and they should be free to lay them out on the table, particularly since when many of them voice their concerns -- about, say, maintaining the purity of American culture -- they come off sounding like xenophobes.
Russert starts by outlining the main features of the Senate immigration bill. Sensenbrenner, who wasted no time denouncing it, proclaims that it is amnesty -- a word he will use again and again in his short time on the show. Sensenbrenner has a curious definition of amnesty, given what the Senate's bill actually does. Illegal immigrants who have been in the US for under two years have to go home. Those who have been here for two to five years also have to return to their country, though they would be allowed to reenter after securing a work visa and would be able to work towards citizenship. Illegal immigrants who have been here over five years could remain and apply for permanent legal status, but they would have to fork over back taxes and fines of up to $3,250, as well as learn English and take civics lessons. This is hardly the outlines of a bill that would allow illegal immigrants to get something for nothing.
Sensenbrenner tells Russert that the first step to dealing with illegal immigration is increasing enforcement, both at the border and with respect to employers. When Russert asks Sensenbrenner what would happen to the three million kids born in the US (who are therefore citizens) under an enforcement-only plan like that adopted by the House, Sensenbrenner says it would be up to the families whether the children would stay in the US or not. Kudos to Russert for raising this point, since it injects some much-needed humanity into the debate by identifying some of the hard choices that the House Republicans would impose on illegal immigrant families.
Hagel comes back swinging. He says that the first half of the Senate bill -- 60 subsections in total -- does in fact deal with enforcement. Hagel also says the Senate's bill is different from what Reagan and Carter did, which, he says, constituted amnesty. Hagel argues that the Senate bill is good because it is comprehensive, dealing not just with increased enforcement but also with what to do with the illegal immigrants already in the US. To show just how important many of these workers are, he cites a story from today's Times, which says that about half of the 5,000 forest firefighters in the Northwest are immigrants and that "untold numbers of them" -- probably most, says Hagel -- are here illegally. (So is Sensenbrenner pro-forest fire?) Hagel goes on to say that the Senate bill is not perfect but that it is not amnesty, that it deals well with enforcement issues, and that it provides "structure" for employers hiring immigrants.
Russert comes back to Sensenbrenner, who says that on the issue of immigration, Bush and the Senate don't "get it." Sensenbrenner comes back to how the Senate bill is amnesty and cites an op-ed from Edward Meese, who was Reagan's Attorney General from 1985 to 1988, to back this up. I'm still not convinced, and neither is Hagel.
Russert then busts Sensenbrenner for a specious argument about illegal immigrants and Social Security. According to Sensenbrenner, giving retroactive social security credit to illegal immigrants with fraudulent social security cards -- which the Senate bill does -- would create an $80 billion to $100 billion "raid on a Social Security trust fund that we all know isn't that healthy." "But," Russert asks, "isn't it estimated that illegal immigrants have contributed over $400 billion into the Social Security trust fund?" Ouch! Sensenbrenner falls back and, not addressing this seriously good point, says that the cards were obtained fraudulently. Nice try, Jim.
It's then Hagel's turn to knock down another bogus Sensenbrenner argument. It is not true, as Sensenbrenner had said earlier, that the Senate bill would create a serious problem of document fraud on the part of illegal immigrants. Hagel says the Senate bill mandates that every immigrant worker have a biometric identification fraud. "It's tamper proof, fraud-resistant," he says. That's gotta hurt.
After talking with Hagel about the political consequences of a stalemate over immigration (which, Hagel says, would not be good, since "politics is about accountability, it's about leadership, it's about courage"), Russert goes back to Sensenbrenner for the big question: "Would you accept any legislation which would put illegal immigrants on the path to citizenship or, as you say, amnesty?" "No," Sensenbrenner responds, "amnesty is wrong." After this, there's some more talk about immigration, but nothing particularly illuminating. About all the talk about amnesty, Hagel says, "I'm amused, is the only reaction I can have .... I mean, this is just not amnesty." Hagel also points out how unproductive it is to rule out a compromise -- as Sensenbrenner seems to have just done -- right before heading into a conference to reconcile the House and Senate bills. It's going to be a long summer.
Russert then turns to the dustup over the raid of Representative William Jefferson's office and asks Sensenbrenner about the hearing he has arranged-- "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?" -- which does not at all have a loaded title. Sensenbrenner says that corrupt congressmen can't hide behind the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution -- which provides that "for any Speech or Debate in either House, [senators and representatives] shall not be questioned in any other place" -- but that the FBI has been able to conduct corruption investigations in the past without raiding offices. Indeed, he says, this has not happened in 219 years. Sensenbrenner says, as an analog, that it wouldn't be right for a House committee to issue a subpoena and send the Capitol Police to the White House to rummage through and take files. After I snap out of the daydream of a House that's actually interested in investigating the executive branch for all of its egregious abuses of power over the last five and a half years, I see Russert speaking with Hagel, who admits that he's not completely familiar with the details of the incident but that he thinks the situation was "handled awkwardly" and that the President was right to seal Jefferson's records in order for a resolution to be reached between the Justice Department and the House. Hagel says that a lot of this has to do with "atmospherics" and the "very testy relationship" between the White House and Congress right now. "You mean Republicans are fed up with the Bush White House?" Russert asks. Hagel points to a "universe of bigger issues," including the revelations about the NSA's domestic surveillance, and appears to confirm that, yes, indeed they are fed up.
(For those of you more interested in the legal issues surrounding the Jefferson search: The raid presents an issue that the Supreme Court has never before addressed. Gravel v. United States, the leading case interpreting the Speech and Debate Clause, suggests at one point that congressmen do not have immunity from generally applicable criminal laws, but because that case presented facts that did not require a ruling on that issue, it is hard to say exactly where the Supreme Court would come out on the Jefferson raid. For arguments from legal scholars that nothing illegal took place when the FBI searched Jefferson's office, see here, here, and here. For arguments on the other side, see here and here. The former set of commentators appears to have much stronger arguments.)
Finally, Russert asks Hagel about a statement he made last week in which he said the Bush administration should engage directly with Iran. Hagel reiterates the point and, in a startlingly candid assessment of Middle East policy, goes on to say, "I think you could make a pretty strong case that things are worse off in the Middle East today than they were three years ago. By measurement of Iraq, by Iran, by the Palestinian-Israeli issue, what's going on in Egypt. And, I think the United States must use its force of diplomacy to engage Iran."
After a break, it's time for the roundtable, which is heavy with Washington Post columnists this week: David Broder, David Ignatius, and Eugene Robinson from the Post are at the table, as is National Review's Kate O'Beirne. Nothing particularly interesting takes place. I'll break the discussion down by issue.
IMMIGRATION: Russert starts by pointing to a Post article with the headline "Immigration Deal at Risk as House GOP Looks to Voters." Broder, who is pessimistic about the prospects of a deal being reached at all, says that many House Republicans would rather see no bill than a bill they think their constituents wouldn't support. Russert turns to O'Beirne and asks her about Hastert's statement that he won't let a bill get to the House floor unless a majority of House Republicans support it. (This, as the Times put it, "giv[es] 116 Republican lawmakers out of [Hastert's] total caucus of 231 members the power to bottle up a bill, even if most of the House's 435 members eventually support something like the Senate compromise.") O'Beirne points out that this is a longstanding doctrine of Hastert's and tries to say that it is "not too much unlike" what Democrats did when they controlled the House. Nice try, I think, but completely misleading. Robinson says that if a bill doesn't come out of the conference, it will hurt the GOP. Ignatius says that it may not be entirely bad if the bill fails, since it could just mean "that the country really isn't quite yet at the point where there is a clear path that everybody will feel comfortable about going forward." O'Beirne chimes back in and blames the current illegal immigration problem on the 1986 bill and says that House Republicans are coming around on a guest worker program.
THE JEFFERSON RAID: Russert reads from a harsh National Review editorial that takes Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, and John Boehner to task for getting upset about the raid. (A quick aside: Pelosi, what were you thinking?) O'Beirne says she doesn't think there's a constitutional argument against the raid but that DOJ could've handled the situation better. She also says people within DOJ leaked in retaliation against Hastert -- "falsely claiming" he was "a target" of the Abramoff investigation -- after he spoke about the Jefferson raid. Unfortunately that's not true. The story claimed that Hastert was "in the mix" of the investigation, not that he was a formal target. Robinson says that DOJ was "putting down a marker," saying that it's prepared to aggressively push the Abramoff investigation when people in Congress are being uncooperative. Broder says the law is probably on DOJ's side but that a challenge will require the Supreme Court to clear up the issue.
IRAQ: Russert brings up the President's statement last week, in a joint press conference with Tony Blair, that he regretted his asinine taunt to terrorists to "bring it on," as well as saying that we should capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," and, more generally, the Abu Ghraib scandal. Russert asks, "Are we seeing a President who's been chastened by Iraq? More introspective about Iraq?" Ignatius says he saw a little of both but notes that when Blair admitted a mistake in the conduct of the war -- citing de-Baathification -- it was "much more substantive." (Notice, moreover, that the President has been content to see low-level soldiers punished for Abu Ghraib rather than push for an aggressive investigation that could lead to his old pal Rummy.)
IRAN: Russert asks Ignatius about a column he wrote last week raising the concern that the world may not trust US intelligence anymore after the disaster over WMDs in Iraq: "Will the world, will the country listen to an American president saying, 'Iran is dangerous. We must do something?'" Ignatius says that's a serious problem. Asked about whether the US should engage in direct talks with Iran, Broder says it might be unwise because it would lead Europeans to wonder whether the US, which has been talking up multilateralism, can keep its commitments. At this point I wonder whether Broder has read his colleague's column on why engagement should be pursued. Given that direct talks with Iran might deescalate the situation, this would be a curious time to start worrying about what the Europeans think of us. If we can prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by talking to them, somehow I think the Europeans will get over it.
And last but not least, The Meet the Press Minute, focusing on Lloyd Bentsen, who passed away last week. "Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy," indeed.
That's it, everyone. As I said, discuss, correct, and supplement in the comments section. And have a great Memorial Day.