CONSISTENCY ONLY WORKS SOMETIMES

DATELINE: Hobgoblinville, September 7 –  Consistency is great if you’re training a puppy or grooving the perfect golf swing. But it’s not a resume highlight if you’re President of the United States and your claim to consistency fame is agonizing indecision.

Obama’s delay this week of his promised executive action on immigration is just another instance of incapacitating fear triumphing over political fortune. Not that politics should be a winner. It’s that postponing the measure guaranteed to pro-immigration groups in June shows that the President’s hesitation is not merely over defense of the nation. It permeates everything he does.

Most critics chastise Obama’s executive action delay as an unabashed attempt to protect members of his party in the November elections. And this time, the criticism is coming from all points along the political spectrum.

Republicans jeer the move as cowardly since Democrats will not have to defend unilateral amnesty during their fall campaigns. Groups who were promised action “before the end of summer” agree with the assessment and have expressed bitter disappointment. They actually expected the President to be as good as his word.

With a ridiculous twist, the President agrees that politics is at the heart of his delay. He claims that the initial Republican condemnation in June deceived voters. Obama needs more time to formulate a convincing counter-argument so the easily confused, which is most of us, can better understand the issue.

Wow. That’s a bunch of baloney. In fact, the whole politics excuse is pure hokum. Obama admitted as much when he went on to state the real reason for the delay. According to him, he and his staff must get “all our ducks in a row for the executive action” before it can be taken.

Well, let’s see. He made the ironclad promise to act before the end of summer on June 30. You’d think that, when he gave the guarantee, his people knew how to get those pesky ducks lined up.

After all, White House staffers know how to produce executive actions. According to the Federal Register, Obama has issued 184 of them so far.

And the White House has been studying the immigration problem for six years. You’d also have to think that Obama’s people have all of that nailed down by now, but apparently not. It makes you wonder who’s easily confused by the issue.

At the end of the day, it’s not the ducks that are refusing to cooperate. It’s that the President’s ironclad promises are covered in chicken feathers.