Houston Democrats

I'll never quite understand why, of all the idiots in the world, the powers that be behind the Republican curtains came to select this particular bumbling, rudderless twit to run the government for them.

But the latest sleight of hand pandering on the immigation issue shows the extent of their cynicism. On the one hand the US Chamber of Commerce fatcats just love having that steady swarm of cheap, unionless labor around to keep human resource costs adequately depressed. On the other, keeping the Flyover Country rubes voting for their spokesmodels means occasionally stirring up a heaping dose of xenophobia by militarizing the border and treating our visiting labor pool like a national security threat.

So how do they have it both ways? Simple: propose inadequate solutions for problems you don't want solved, casually tap an overburdened public asset like the national guard while ignoring the costs, and send the celebrity spokesmodel down for a photo op to create a positive news story that makes it look like the situation is actually being managed.

The term "photo op" originally meant photo opportunity. The government was doing such-and-such a thing; so let's have the president run down there to pose with it and get our guy on the news. But the photo ops of today aren't utilizing existing opportunities--they are stage managed falsehoods, premature declarations of missions accomplished. They don't highlight government action, they substitute for government action.

The problem with this approach, besides the obvious of not accomplishing a durn thing, is that we've seen it all before. The public is a lot more media savvy than I think our Republican friends understand. If your guy is riding 65% approval ratings, most people are willing to accept a Fauntleroyesque turkey strut across the deck of an aircraft carrier. But when your boy is in the low 30 doldrums, it's not going to convince anyone if you dance in the endzone every time someone snaps the ball.

Of course it also would help if your "war hero" knew how to climb out of a dune buggy without some dashing young gentleman there to hold his hand.