Though Bill Clinton came to be associated with “the bridge to the 21st century,” he actually said that he, America, we, were “building” that bridge. As it turns out, the bridge to 21st century leadership that Bill Clinton, through a variety of his actions and the over-reactions to his actions, built was the presidency of George W. Bush. After all, a bridge is really just something you gotta get over. So, now we’re approaching America’s opportunity to get off this rickety fuck*ing bridge, and get on with the 21st century - the real one. Flying cars and jet packs, here we come.

Americans, on our 8-year slog across this bridge, have grown leery about bodies of water. Particularly shallow rivers that flow between two sovereign nations, approximately 313 miles southwest of my Houston home where I am currently sitting.

As of Tuesday evening, the U.S. Senate kept alive key components of the comprehensive immigration bill which grants a path to legal residency to 12 million currently undocumented immigrants (with, of course, the required documentation), further secures our otherwise impermeable border, and provides for 600,000 temporary workers to enter the U.S. to tend crops, work Dell call centers, mow Mitt Romney’s yard, engineer roads and bridges, write essays for elementary school students and work as wet nurses.

The issue has brought conservatives, moderates and liberals together to support this bill, while uniting conservatives, moderates and liberals to defeat the initiative. To evaluate the electoral breakdown of the two national coalitions which have formed on either side of this issue provides a fascinating case study of regionalism, racism, labor politics and post-9/11 paranoia. But who has time for that shi.t? We just wanna know who wins.

According to MSNBC’s Tom Curry, the answer is Democrats. Though Curry touches briefly on the future electoral ramifications of the perceived conservatism and overwhelmingly Catholic and Latino culture, his answer is Democrats.

However, the way that 12 million new working-class would-be citizens may or may not vote in the mid-term elections of 2022 may miss the point entirely. The issue, for 2008 and election years to come is, what Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King calls the potential “collapse” of the Republican Party, should the president sign this bill, as he has indicated he will.

King, who has worked to raise awareness about the imaginary “slow-motion terrorist attack” allegedly perpetrated by illegal immigrants in the form of various sex crimes against “eight little girls” a day, has indicated that “Republicans will get the blame” if the proposal becomes law, “and Democrats will get the credit and the votes.”

Though it could be the mutiny of King and others like him, from the captain they have served so faithfully, lo these seven-ish years, which has more influence on the future of the Republican Party, and politics in America, than the electoral population adjustment to which he’s alluding.

Over the course of the W administration, a cottage industry of comparing 43 to President 37 has sprung up. A Google search of “Bush is Richard Nixon” (no quotes) generates over a million hits. But, what if, Bush isn’t Nixon at all, but Johnson? What if we’re not re-living the pre-malaise that was the early 70s, but the all-
encompassing nationwide bumblefuck that was the late 60s?

Now, before I go another step further towards blasphemy, let me clarify. LBJ, for his many, many faults - and there were many, many - did more to bring this country into the mainstream of Western human rights than any president in the last century. Johnson, at his best, was a leader of Americans, a true Texan and the best friend, both in Congress and the White House, that working families ever had in Washington. Bush, on the other hand, is Bizarro King Midas - everything he touches, from Arbusto to Iraq, turns to sh*it. Although Johnson, like W, was the son of a politician, it’s hard to make the
case that Texas State Representative Sam E. Johnson gave his boy quite the same head start that George Herbert Walker Bush gave to his. (Born on 3rd base, thought he hit a triple.)

With that said, the ne’er-do-well Connecticut yankee Texan poseur, in many respects, appears to be on a track very similar to that which amounted to a catastrophic end for the administration of the real Texan. By this point in his administration, Johnson had not yet recognized that the war in Vietnam was not to end favorably for the U.S. Bush too remains insulated to the realities of the war.

Johnson recognized that his efforts to pass meaningful civil rights legislation “lost the South [for Democrats] for a generation,” while Bush’s stand on immigration, specifically his wacky position that the U.S. is not going to expel 12 million contributing consumers, threatens to fracture the Republican party as deeply. For Bush’s Republican Party, this non-localized ideological rift may prove far more difficult to remedy, as intense regional campaigning will do little to either offset losses, or re-convert voters who abandon the party, and potentially voting altogether, amidst perceived betrayal.

Most telling perhaps, is the rampant violation of Reagan’s 11th Commandment in the Republican pre-primary elephant walk, particularly the sniping between the erstwhile wrinkly face of the Republican Party, Senator John McCain, and former Liberal Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Romney, who had at one point expressed support for comprehensive immigration reform, is expressing his reservations about the current agreement. McCain, in response, has suggested that “maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn.”

It’s early, but it’s ugly. Not “he doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin” ugly. Worse. While Johnny Mac’s slam was half in jest, his message was not. The immigration issue is substantive, and a lot of voters have realized that it’s their top priority. Though the schism in understanding shows at every point along the political spectrum, King may be right that the GOP will get the worst of this, one way or the other. Which, by the way, they earned with their race-baiting and fear-mongering (I’m looking at you, Mr. King) throughout this debate.

So, while the Republican Party burns, how do the Democratic Presidential candidates strike? Well, if Bush is Johnson, and the Republicans of 2008, the Democrats of 1968, the Democrats should (gulp) act like Nixon. But only through next Fall!!!

In 1968, Nixon was already a nationally known commodity. He had been in three national campaigns; the first 16 years prior as Ike’s second fiddle, and most recently as Republican first chair violinist in 1960. He was a fundraising and stumping star within his party, and still generally disliked by Democrats. Despite his high profile, as a politician as omnipresent as any in the second half of the last century, his 1968 campaign is remembered primarily for the fact that it was successful amidst the Democratic meltdown. He made vague appeals to the conservative “silent majority,” gave no details on his plan for “peace with honor” in Vietnam, and ultimately was successful. He won mostly by promoting Dick (Take notes, Barack.) and letting the Democrats fight their way out of the White House.

So, to capitalize on the chaos overtaking the party of Nixon, Democrats should sit… sort of. Of course, they need to run their campaigns, they need to talk about the issues, and the president. They need to build their machines for success in the primaries (without drawing each other’s blood) and success in the general election to come. Ultimately, in late 2008, as a party, they have to be good, and let the Republicans do the work of electing the next Democratic president - maybe even Hillary.