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Analysis: On Immigration, Read 'Iraq'

Council on Foreign Relations

May 15, 2006
Prepared by: Michael Moran

The extent to which public opinion polling drives presidential policy decisions is an ever contentious topic. Just as it can be tricky to prove the connection between campaign donations and a member's voting record in Congress, evidence of the link between presidential behavior and polls is hard to nail down. Yet as President George W. Bush's job approval ratings fall precipitously, more and more political observers and experts claim to be discerning a clear link between policy and polls (NPR).

The decision, somewhat suddenly, to dispatch thousands of National Guard troops to the Mexican border (MSNBC.com) is a case in point. Democrats portray the move as purely political (WashPost), aimed at courting conservatives increasingly unhappy with Bush's presidency. On the other side, a significant number of Republicans—Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA), for instance—say they'll regard anything less than a complete shutdown of the Mexican border, along with the deployment of tens of thousands of troops there, as a sop to liberal interests and Latino voters. Mexico's President Vicente Fox, courted early on in Bush's tenure as an ally on immigration, has called Bush to register concern about border militarization (BBC). The immigration debate is explained in this CFR Background Q&A by Esther Pan.

Whether motivated by policy or politics, leading members of both U.S. political parties appear to agree Bush's decisions from here in, whether domestic, foreign, or, like immigration policy, a mix of the two, are informed and limited by the war in Iraq. The president's chief political advisor, Karl Rove, says: "People like this president. They're just sour right now on the war." True or not, it has weakened the president, bolstered his rivals, and encouraged dissenters in the GOP's ranks (WashPost).

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.