The collapse of comprehensive immigration revision in the Senate last night represents a political defeat for President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill’s most prominent sponsors. More significantly, it represents a scathing indictment of the political culture of Washington, the Washington Post reports.
The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn’t move their troops and on an increasingly weakened president and his White House team. But together it added up to another example of a polarized political system in which the center could not hold.
The partisan blame game was already at fever pitch as the bill was going down yesterday. But to those far removed from the backrooms of Capitol Hill, what happened will fuel cynicism toward a political system that appears incapable of finding ways to resolve the nation’s big challenges.
If Washington cannot produce a solution to the glaring problem of immigration, they will ask, what hope is there for progress on health care, energy independence, or the financial challenges facing Medicare and Social Security? Iraq is another matter entirely.
