there would be a plan somewhere, a multi-year plan, if it was not being followed somebody would have come up with a new plan. but that is not how they work in washington. if it looks like what we do doesn t make a lot of sense it is because much of what we do doesn t make sense. what they re trying to find is the great myth of washington, the scheming. if you have been watching a lot of house of cards on netflix, it is all about the myth of scheming. i know what i have to do. good. we ll have a lot of nights like this. making plans. very little sleep. i expected that. it doesn t worry me. i better get to work. lots of plans, no sleep,
moody lighting. this is the most pervasive of all washington myths, that the washington insiders are effectively scheming all the time. that everything that happens fits into somebody s plan. but it doesn t. maybe what happens began as a scheme, but soon enough, everybody in washington, from interns to the white house, everybody is at best reacting to what just happened a moment ago, and at best, failing to react to what just happened a moment ago. and in all cases they re doing it with less information they need. that is the main thing i learned as a reporter and political adviser in washington, nobody can carry out all plans. all parties and groups, they re bumbling, and everybody thinks everybody else is efficient and ruthless, people are very good at recognizing disarray on the other side, but they see the
unplanned. what they are losing politically, they re gaining substantively. i think that people not reading it, thinking a plan doesn t come out, because if it did, would republicans stop saying it? the other thing is, like what i think jean hilly said if only the president would come up and give a speech, the speech that is slightly different than the one he is giving now. or if he would slightly tweak his agenda, then republicans would come to the table. we re saying what i think is true. the big part of it, republicans don t want to come to the table. they just want to move the table. this is a strategy, there is not something the president can do to force them to move. they actually have to want to. if they want to, there will be consequences to not moving. there is nothing more overrated than presidential leadership. and this is like the classic example where everybody is going to sit around and call for
to be other improvements in the legalization part, i should add like h 1-bz s, guest worker program, very important. but finally, at the end of the day we have got to have a consensus where people are willing to support this, and everybody knows they re not going to get everything they want. he is not going to get everything he wants, i m not going to get everything i want. that is the way that american politics and government works. governor, on the question of how we secure the border, in the last couple of years as you know we spent a lot of resources on it. we actually hit a lot of targets we set up in george w. bush s program bill, the rest of the bill didn t pass. that doesn t mean we have full control over every inch of the border, but what do you think needs to be done from here? to give people a sense of security that enough has been done that we can now move on to the path of citizenship. well, ezra, let me make two