No Biden Shouldn't Pay The GOP's Latest Ransom Demand
At least not yet, maybe not at all
President Biden seems prepared once again to pay Republicans substantive ransoms in exchange for releasing hostages (in this case, military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan) that have broad bipartisan support.
And (once again) a consensus is forming that Biden should simply pay these ransoms (in this case, a suite of right-wing immigration policies) rather than let Republicans undermine the consensus view of U.S. interests.
Ross Douthat got the ball rolling last week with a New York Times column titled “Why Biden Should Make an Immigration Deal With Republicans,” in which he makes no mention of the fact that Biden’s facing a ransom demand (that is, there’s no “immigration deal” in the works) or who the hostages are.
But other writers who are not doctrinaire restrictionists also think Biden should give Republicans what they want, or at least much of it.
OF makes a genuinely spirited case for what he calls “caving.” He acknowledges throughout the piece that Republicans created this standoff in bad faith, and stipulates (without much elaboration) that this complicates Biden’s analysis, yet lays out in detail why caving is nevertheless Biden’s best (or least bad) move.What we have here is a good-faith argument that can’t be resolved conclusively, because there’s no objective way to know in advance what the optimal thing to do is when moral imperatives are pitted against each other and the future is murky.
But I think we can do a better job teasing out the proposition, and when you do that rigorously, it seems much less clear that he should cave. If anything, actual immigration restrictionists like Douthat should be urging Republicans to stop acting in bad faith, and cut a deal with Biden, rather than urging Biden to cut a deal with people who may not actually want one.
THE MATRIX, INSURRECTIONS
We can simplify the calculus a little bit by breaking down the options Biden faces, and how they’d develop in the two likeliest medium-term scenarios.
Biden pays the GOP ransoms (assuming there are any they’d actually accept) and goes on to beat Donald Trump.
Biden pays the GOP ransoms (assuming there are any they’d actually accept) and goes on to lose to Donald Trump.
Biden walks away and goes on to beat Donald Trump.
Biden walks away and goes on to lose to Donald Trump
(Apologies, I’d have presented this as a 2x2 matrix, but my graphic-design skills are for shit.)
To me this raises a few pretty obvious questions: