Bill Press: Delay does matter

“Justice delayed is justice denied.” While there’s some debate over whether Britain’s William Gladstone was the one to first utter those words, there’s no debate over their meaning: If you’ve suffered an injury, being forced to wait too long for legal redress is as bad as having no redress at all. 

What’s true about the legal system is also true about politics. Politics delayed is also justice denied. For those who’ve suffered a political injury, being forced to wait and wait and wait for relief can be as bad as not getting any relief at all. Case in point: President Obama’s decision to delay executive action on immigration until after the midterm elections.

{mosads}Delay, of course, is just the opposite of what Obama originally promised. Appearing before reporters in the Rose Garden on June 30, with Vice President Biden at his side, he angrily denounced House Republicans for failing to take up the issue of immigration reform, even after reports surfaced of more than 50,000 unaccompanied children fleeing to the border from Central America. If Congress won’t act, vowed the president, he would. He’d already directed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to identify what actions he could take on his own. He expected their recommendations “before the end of summer,” he concluded, and intended to adopt them “without further delay.”

But that was then, and this is now. That was before the White House was swamped with calls from nervous Senate Democrats asking the president to back off. That was before Democratic campaign managers pointed out that Latinos make up less than 10 percent of the electorate in eight out of nine critical Senate races, so why bother? And that was before the president agreed to put party politics over principle and stuff immigration reform into deep freeze until sometime after votes are counted in November.

Cynics argue that Obama’s about-face won’t make any difference because, as long as he does the right thing in the end, it doesn’t matter how long he takes. Everybody remembers he’s the first president to endorse same-sex marriage, for example, not how long it took him to “evolve.” But they’re dead wrong. There are real people who will continue to suffer real harm until problems with our immigration system are fixed. With immigration, delay does matter.

Chuck Todd, in his maiden appearance as host of “Meet the Press,” made that point with his opening question on immigration to Obama: “What do you tell the person that’s going to get deported before the election that this decision was essentially made in your hopes of saving a Democratic Senate?” A friend brought it home to me it an anguished email: “What am I supposed to tell my stepson: ‘We can’t have progress because people fear you?’ ” 

There was a day when politicians dared do the right thing, and not always the politically safe thing. But that day has come and gone. Even with President Obama, it’s business as usual: politics over principle.

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of The Obama Hate Machine.