Border Surges, Van Taylor, and "The American President"

Which of these is not as cynical as the others?

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Border Traffic Shuts Down Over Abbott Stunt

Last week, Governor Greg Abbott announced that he’d directed the DPS to increase its inspection of commercial trucks coming in from Mexico to Texas. The Texas Tribune is reporting that Mexican truckers are now blocking the international bridges in protest of the new interdiction.

Mexican truckers on Monday blocked north- and southbound lanes on the Mexico side of the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in protest of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to have state troopers inspect northbound commercial vehicles — historically a job done by the federal government.

The bridge connecting Pharr and Reynosa is the busiest trade crossing in the Rio Grande Valley and handles the majority of the produce that crosses into the U.S. from Mexico, including avocados, broccoli, peppers, strawberries and tomatoes.

If you thought your avocados and broccoli cost too much because of general pandemic-related inflation, get ready for them to cost more, or even disappear.

My friend James Moore wrote an excellent deconstruction of Abbott’s latest political stunt:

The governor has ordered state troopers to set up inspection stations near the border and to wave over every trucker for a safety check. The cargo inspection is under the federal purview of customs and INS and is not supposed be checked again by a state authority. The result of Abbott’s approach is to simply slow down the movement of goods and produce because random mechanical and safety checks are already conducted on semi-trailers and panel trucks entering the country. Unless border inspectors and their drug-sniffing dogs missed a truck with a sleeping cartel member accompanying a load of fentanyl and the smuggler sneezed as a DPS trooper walked by, there’s not much chance of this silliness having any restrictive impact.

But it is already screwing with the Texas economy.

Abbott claims this is a response to the Biden Administration’s announcement it will cease enforcement of a policy known as Title 42, which allowed the Trump Administration to refuse all asylum-seekers at the border on the grounds they may be bringing COVID-19 with them. This is like burning down a house because it might flood.

My theory of Abbott’s motivation is a little different. Astute readers will recall that back in 2014, then-Governor Rick Perry and the Lege authorized a “border surge,” “to “deter and disrupt drug and human trafficking, and other border-related crimes,” at considerable expense — $3.5 billion so far — to Texas taxpayers. For over a month now, the Tribune, Pro Publica, and other news organizations have been reporting that the DPS border surge is embarrassingly short-handed when it comes to actual results. Abbott has struggled to make the increased DPS presence on the border anything more than the political boondoggle and fiefdom-building exercise it has always seemed, and this seems to be his latest effort to make the surge into a real thing.

Whatever Abbott’s motivation is, we know it is not about improving the quality of life of Texans.

Update on Van Taylor and the Isis Bride

Last month, I reported on the meltdown of Rep. Van Taylor’s reelection campaign in the white-hot heat of credible accusations of infidelity with “Isis Bride” Tania Joya (whose personal story, by the way, is fascinating). The affaire de coeur was revealed just as Taylor was winning a plurality in the March 1 primaries, and led Taylor to drop out of the runoff.

Now, The Texas Tribune’s Patrick Svitek is out with a terrific backgrounder about a Plano man who spent some $400,000 on a super PAC opposing Taylor this spring. Although the man, Josh Malone, claims no knowledge of Taylor’s affair or its imminent unveiling, the PAC blanketed his district with signs saying “Van Taylor Betrayed Us,” which turned out to have a whole new resonance in the light of the infidelity accusations.

Malone’s grievance? Taylor seemed uninterested in patent law reforms Malone was pushing.

Read the whole thing.

“The American President” and the Decline in Comity

“The American President” is now 27 years old. Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner, it was nominated for five Golden Globes and an Oscar. Its protagonist is Andrew Shepherd, a widowed president played by Michael Douglas. The antagonist is Bob Rumson, an opportunistic small-state US Senator running against him. (For reference: Shepherd is Clinton, Rumson is Dole.)

In its idealism and unabashed liberalism, the movie seems so much older now. To be sure, “liberal” was already a slur by then, but American politics is presented with almost a rosy, elegiac glow. This was years before some boor would dare to shout “You lie!” at the President of the United States during a State of the Union address.

The emotional high point of the movie is an impromptu presidential appearance at a daily press briefing, The interesting part starts at the two-minute mark:

“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

I’ve been thinking about that speech a lot lately. Sorkin portrays Rumson voters as helpless. made “afraid” by demagogic charlatans, lacking any agency by virtue of their fear and helplessness.

My, how times have changed. Political rhetoric no longer seeks to make people feel afraid or powerless; it seeks rather to enrage them, and to build a political movement around that rage. Fear is a bad motivator in a democracy, albeit an ancient one. Outrage is worse, because it justifies a multitude of sins. Whereas people can fear things — global warming, immigration, income inequality, etc., they can only be outraged at an Other, whomever that is. Rage is when it gets personal.

This has not been a good development for our country. And it will only get worse.