Bush's border plan a disappointment to all

As though this is a surprise to anyone. Bush is still trapped between the corporatist and nationalist factions of his party (as well as the immigrant community), and instead of demonstrating leadership and proposing his own idea, he's tried to please everybody with a laughable plan that won't do anything to solve the problem.

If Jose F. and Ms. Whiteford were any indication, Mr. Bush managed to disappoint people on both sides of the immigration debate on Monday night. Each side said it had hoped to hear more encouraging words over an issue that has become a showdown in Congress and on the streets of cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. Each side saw hints of an extended fight ahead.

Some supporters of tighter border restrictions said they did not approve of the way they said Mr. Bush had signaled that he wanted some of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to become legal. On the other hand, some immigrants and their advocates said they did not agree with his clearly stated opposition to anything resembling "amnesty."

The Nation spells out the ways in which this plan just won't work.

The real mission of the 6,000 National Guard troops he has called out is to quell the rebellion on the President's right flank, the flaring mutiny of his own conservative base. Indeed, if the President were being honest, the newly mobilized troops would be taken off the Federal payroll and moved onto the books of the 2006 national Republican campaign.

They certainly aren't going to be stopping illegal immigration. Most of the Guard will be unarmed. They will be barred from patrolling the border itself, as well as from confronting, apprehending or even guarding the undocumented. The troops will be given solely behind-the-scenes, low-profile, mostly invisible tasks of pushing paper, driving vans, and manning computers. Bush could have saved the taxpayers a load and sent a few battalions of Boy Scouts to do this job.