Six months ago, Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff dismissed the idea of deploying National Guard troops to the Mexican border. Chertoff told Bill O’Reilly that dragooning the Guard into border duty “would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem.”

Today, a DHS spokesman recanted on behalf of Chertoff. Jarrod Agen told Congressional Quarterly that “[w]hat we’re using them for are things they have been trained to do, and have used them for in other circumstances.”

Also today, Government Executive magazine reports that the a House subcommittee has trimmed some funds from the DHS budget and is withholding others because DHS has failed to submit a plan for implementing its Secure Border Initiative. DHS had promised to submit the plan by the end of April, but as of yesterday it had not been sighted.

What all this translates into is that sometime within the few weeks, the White House decided on the National Guard deployment as the most expedient way of papering over the rift between the administration and Congressional Republicans aching for a solid campaign issue with which to motivate the jingo base. Although it’s impossible to rule out sheer incompetence as the explanation for the DHS failure to submit a plan, it’s equally likely that the plan was suspended pending the president’s announcement.

As we noted yesterday, Bush would already have deployed troops to the border if he thought it was necessary and practical. The plan is a hideously expensive, possibly dangerous and probably ineffective stunt. It will divert funds from other, presumably more reasonable measures — the missing SBI implementation plan speaks to that — it will tie up Guard troops that may well be needed elsewhere, in the process placing yet more stress on Guard members who have already spent more than enough time away from their homes and jobs, and although the president insists the move doesn’t represent a militarization of the border, it sets exactly that precedent.

Bush is counting on sufficient public endorsement of the plan to neutralize Republicans who want a more heartfelt military presence on the border along with a more Draconian approach to punishing illegal immigrants who succeed in entering the US. So far, it doesn’t seem to be working.

He should have given the speech I told him to. As soon as he started talking about guest worker programs and the impossibility of deporting 11 million illegals, it was all over. President Bush keeps trying to find the middle ground, on this and many other issues. But sometimes, there isn’t a viable middle ground. This is one of those instances.

President Bush is being destroyed by vicious people who hate him [emphasis mine]. So far, he hasn’t seemed to notice. Apparently, he doesn’t think he needs any allies. He certainly didn’t win any with tonight’s speech.

That’s from the inimitable John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog, who apparently thinks Karl Rove and the others who developed the policy Bush articulated last night are operating as a Fifth Column inside the White House. Maybe he’s right; if so, more power to them. I just wish they’d stumbled upon a plan that didn’t involve wrecking the country along with the president.

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Thanks to TPM Muckraker’s Justin Rood for spotting the story on Chertoff’s reversal.

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