Obama Says He’ll “Try” To Pass Immigration Reform

President Barack Obama has learned a few things in his three years in office. He’s learned to edit his comments and he’s learned that campaigning for president as a Senator is very different than doing it from the White House.

Case in point: on his way to Cartagena, Colombia last week to attend the Summit of the Americas, the President stopped in Miami for a little campaigning and fundraising. While there he gave an interview to Univision’s Enrique Acevedo. Four years ago, as a candidate for president, he promised, in another Univision interview, that he’d pass immigration reform in his first year in office. That unfulfilled promise has been fodder for his opposition and food for dismay for Latino activists.

This time around he went there again, although he tread much more lightly – this is, after all, an election year. He told Acevedo:

“I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term,” he said?

“Try” being the operative word.  But then again, given the history and the political circumstances, what else could he have said?

Here’s the thing: Immigration, whether the President or Acevedo like it or not, has become a top-tier, hot button, wedge issue all rolled into one. Latinos didn’t make it so, in fact, Latinos were preoccupied with jobs and education and health before immigration was shoved into the national consciousnesses from the extreme right. But there it is; important to Latinos now because of the way Latinos have become identified with the issue.

Also, Latinos are important on a national scale because of the value, or perceived value, of the Latino vote. Whether true or mythical, there is a vast and growing consensus that Latino voters will play a very important role in the coming presidential election.

So, you have a sitting President campaigning for re-election, interviewed by a Latino network where he has a history of making an unfulfilled promise about immigration reform. You know the question is going to come up. The reporter knows he has to ask the question. The President knows it’s coming. It’s inevitable. As was the tap-dance.

What did we expect, given all of the circumstances? Obama said he’d like to pass immigration reform this year – I’m sure he would. But he can’t, there’s jus too much negativitiy.

“The challenge we’ve got on immigration reform is very simple; I’ve got a majority of Democrats who are prepared to vote for it and I’ve got no Republicans who are prepared to vote for it.”

The next best thing is to promise he’ll try – first thing after he’s re-elected.  Which, he added, is better than what the other guy will do:

“We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country; that — and these are laws that potentially would allow someone to be stopped and picked up and asked where their citizenship papers are based on an assumption,” he said.

Not that I’m cynical, or anything. It’s just that this is April of a presidential election year, and we’ve heard this before from Candidate Obama in a less cautious tone.  I think the President is better off sticking to saving GM and passing healthcare reform. But then again, he doesn’t ask the questions.