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Much of President Obama's presidency currently falls into the category of damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

That certainly is true on the question of whether he should visit the U.S.-Mexico border during his two-day visit to Texas.

 if this isn't Obama's "Katrina moment," an allusion to President George W. Bush's 2005 failure to immediately visit the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast once the storm had passed. Instead, Bush viewed the vast devastation from Air Force One.


But even Bush offered reasonable reasons at the time for not visiting New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. A presidential visit would have diverted resources from rescue and recovery efforts, his administration said.

As with Bush, there are reasonable-sounding reasons for Obama to go or not go to the border. Here are a few — on both sides of the question.


In any event, Obama's visiting the border very likely wouldn't achieve much more than a glorified photo op. It certainly wouldn't do much, if anything, to diminish the criticism aimed at him over the administration's handling of the crisis. So the president really can't win on this one, border visit or no.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Frank James

Author

Much of President Obama's presidency currently falls into the category of damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. That certainly is true on the question of whether he should visit the U.S.-Mexico border during his two-day visit to Texas.

Should President Obama visit the Texas border?

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