The irony of President Bush in Orange County

What wonderful irony.

George Bush is at the nadir of his presidency. By almost every polling yardstick, he has hit record lows. The once solid underpinning of his support from the political and religious right is being splintered by the morass in Iraq and the corruption at home. Members of his own party are avoiding photo ops with him. The tiny margin by which he won elections has long since been swallowed up by doubt. And to rub salt in the political wound, Neil Young has just released an album calling for Bush’s impeachment, and a Seymour Hersh article in the current issue of the New Yorker lays bare some shattering plans in Washington for Iran that reprise the build-up for Iraq.

What do us common folk do when we are getting heat from all directions? We look to our friends for comfort and help, don’t we? And maybe even presidents who never make a mistake can allow that same urge.

So George Bush came to Orange County ? probably the safest, most secure place in the nation for a president with Bush’s record ? to kick off his shoes, rest the bruised bones and recharge the old batteries. Republican Valhalla, that’s what we are.

And then, the irony.

Bush, needing love, chose to address us on probably the only topic in this political environment guaranteed to deliver a heavy dose of the opposite. For Bush, getting it right on immigration meant getting more heat than love from a large portion of his local Republican supporters.

The mayor of Costa Mesa, Allan Mansoor, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, for example, chose not to attend the speech of their own party’s president when he came visiting. The leaders of the Minuteman Project ? which Bush has referred to as “vigilantes” ? weren’t invited, a wise move considering that one of them protesting outside the speaking site told a Los Angeles Times reporter that Bush was “the Grim Reaper of democracy in America.”

And the president arrived here in the midst of the continuing flap over turning Costa Mesa cops into federal immigration agents and shutting down the job center. The $100,000 the job center allegedly cost the city has already been eaten up in the extra expense of providing sec- urity at protest demonstrations, researching legal issues related to the policing policy and servic- ing complaints from local residents by city staff members. Mansoor, who used cost as a reason for killing the job center, dismisses these new expenses as a “tiny fraction” of the city budget.

Mansoor also told a Pilot reporter that the argument that illegal immigrants are taking jobs Americans don’t want is “baloney” ? a tough call for those of us who don’t see very many of what the mayor refers to as “Americans” cutting our lawns or cleaning our houses or caring for our children.

That’s why the Minutemen might want to abandon the Mexican border to play soldier around the businesses ? like the one raided last week by federal agents ? that turn a blind eye to hiring illegal immigrants. Or to homeowners like me who don’t question the legitimacy of the people who work long hours in our yards. We like to think that the president had them in mind when he referred to “decent human beings that need to be treated with respect.”