Decision Points

world invasion and conquest of America.” Meanwhile, a huge crowd of legalization supporters marched through major cities waving Mexican flags, an in-your-face display that offended many Americans.
    The mood on the airwaves affected the attitude in Washington. Congressmen pledged, “We will not surrender America,” and suggested that supporters of reform “wear a scarlet letter
A
for ‘amnesty.’ ” On the other side, the chairman of the Democratic Party compared the temporary worker program to “indentured servitude.” The head of America’s largest labor union labeled the reform bill “anti-family and anti-worker.”
    At the height of the frenzy, I got a call from Ted Kennedy after I’d finished delivering a speech at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. “Mr. President,” he said, “you need to call Harry Reid and tell him to keep the Senate in session over the weekend.” We believed we were within a vote or two of getting the comprehensive reform bill passed, but the Senate was scheduled to break for its Fourth of July recess. Given the importance of the legislation, I thought it would be worthwhile to allow them a little extra time for the bill to pass. Apparently, Harry Reid did not.
    If Ted Kennedy couldn’t persuade the majority leader of his own party, my odds were not good. I made my pitch, but it was too late. Harry had made his decision. He called a cloture vote, which failed, and then adjourned the Senate. Senators went home and listened to angry constituents stirred up by the loud voices on radio and TV. By the time they came back to Washington, immigration reform was dead. As a result, the coyotes are still in business, immigrants continue to cross the border illegally, and a divisive political issue remains unresolved.

    While I am disappointed I didn’t sign bills into law, I do not regret taking on Social Security and immigration reform. Our efforts raised public awareness about problems that are not going away. One lesson of historyis that it sometimes takes more than one president, even more than one generation, to accomplish a major legislative objective. Lyndon Johnson built on Harry Truman’s efforts to create Medicare. I hope our work on Social Security and immigration will provide a foundation for a future president to reform both. At the minimum, I was able to take some of the shock out of the third rail.
    If I had it to do over again, I would have pushed for immigration reform, rather than Social Security, as the first major initiative of my second term. Unlike Social Security, immigration reform had bipartisan support. The wildfire of opposition that erupted against immigration reform in 2006 and 2007 might not have raged as hot in 2005. We also would not have had to overcome the tensions caused by escalating violence in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Once a successful immigration bill was passed, it could have created a sense of momentum that would have made Social Security easier to tackle. Instead, the reverse happened. When Social Security failed, it widened the partisan divide and made immigration reform tougher.
    The failure of immigration reform points out larger concerns about the direction of our politics. The blend of isolationism, protectionism, and nativism that affected the immigration debate also led Congress to block free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. I recognize the genuine anxiety that people feel about foreign competition. But our economy, our security, and our culture would all be weakened by an attempt to wall ourselves off from the world. Americans should never fear competition. Our country has always thrived when we’ve engaged the world with confidence in our values and ourselves. The same will be true in the twenty-first century.
    One way to reduce the influence of the ideological extremes is to change the way we elect our members of Congress. In 2006, only about 45 of 435 House races were seriously contested. Since members in so-called safe districts do not have to worry about challenges from the opposite party, their biggest vulnerability is getting outflanked in their own party. This is especially true in the era of bloggers, who make national targets out of politicians they deem ideologically impure. The result is that members of Congress from both parties tend to drift toward the extremes as insurance against primary challengers.
    Our government would be more productive—and our politics more