Yesterday, around the same time Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) announced that the state of Arizona is countersuing the federal government due to its “failure to protect Arizona from invasion,” amongst other things, a state senate panel approved a bill to let the governor start taking donations to build a border fence. The East Valley Tribune reports:

The proposal by Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, allows for construction of a new barrier on private property, with the consent of the landowners. Estimates are that would cover about a third of the approximately 370 mile long border, with the balance either on the Tohono O’odham reservation or federal land. [...]

Smith said he has no firm idea of what it might cost to build a suitable fence. But he said that the costs to the state could be minimal if the state is able to get private donations.

Smith also suggested that it’s not incompetence that’s preventing the federal government from building a border wall. He suggests that the government is actually trying to protect the drug cartels’ lucrative drug trade. According to him, it’s a “little secret” that the feds “don’t want to shut the border and the flow of drugs that are coming in here because of how powerful and how wealthy these cartels are.”

If Brewer signs off on Smith’s proposal (which I’m assuming she will), it represents a pretty major contradiction to sue the federal government for failing to deliver on its duty to secure the border and protect Arizona from an “invasion” and then think it’s somehow constitutional to turn around and build a border wall on its own. For the sake of consistency, Republicans running the state of Arizona can’t have it both ways. In legal terms, the Supreme Court has held that “the supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution.” And in practical terms the Department of Homeland Security has prioritized border security initiatives that have proven to be far more effective than constructing a costly border wall.

The government has shifted its focus away from expanding the border wall because it’s expensive and inefficient. According to a 2009 GAO report, so far, the U.S. has spent $2.4 billion since 2005 to erect the unfinished 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border. It’ll cost $6.5 billion to maintain over the next 20 years because rather than preventing people from crossing into the U.S. because some border crossers simply seek a way to go over, under, or through it. The border wall has also pushed most border crossers to more remote and dangerous areas which makes the human smuggling business even more lucrative.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t appear the border has put a huge dent in drug smuggling or illegal immigration. “The existing border fortifications do not keep undocumented migrants out of the US. Not even half are being apprehended on any given trip to the border, and of those who are apprehended, the success rate on the second or third try is upwards of 95 percent,” stated Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California in San Diego. “There is no reason to believe that additional investments in the fence project – both physical fencing and the new “virtual fence” – will create an effective deterrent.”

This morning on Fox News, anchor Martha MacCallum hosted a panel of three experts that was very hostile towards the idea of backing the protesters in Egypt. MacCallum pointed out that people in Tahrir Square “want democracy, they’re tired of being repressed, they want something better,” but her point was immediately challenged by former CIA agent (and frequent Fox guest) Michael Scheuer, who said that only “ill-educated Americans” think that Muslims would reach for an “alien ideology” like democracy. Terry Holt, a former national spokesman for the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, immediately agreed, saying “unfortunately, this is the Middle East” before suggesting he supported the Mubarak dictatorship:

MACCALLUM: What about the argument that these people — you know, you hear them, you listen to what they’re saying in that square, they want democracy, they’re tired of being repressed, they want something better.

SCHEUER: Well Martha, you know, it is only in the minds of ill-educated Americans and especially their leaders to expect 32 million Muslims to reach for — in a time of violence and uncertainty and tumult, to reach for an alien ideology like secular democracy instead of reaching towards a thousand years of faith and trust in Islam. It is absolutely counter-intuitive to believe that people will reach for the strange, rather than for the familiar and trusted. And I really think that —

HOLT: I would like to say — can I say — I appreciate people’s sympathy and interest in democracy, that’s an American instinct. But unfortunately in this case, this is the Middle East. And the traditions there do not support their embracing — if they were allowed to vote in an open election, they would put themselves vulnerable, and make us vulnerable, to dangerous terrorism. Egypt has been our friend as an intelligence gathering operation and we need to realize the reality of the situation.

Watch it:

These opinions ignore and disrespect the serious democratic urges held by many of the Egyptian protesters. “If you turn on your TV, you will see that the protests in Tahrir Square have not ended. We want a civilian, democratic government,” wrote one prominent Egyptian blogger yesterday.

But it’s also the height of irony for a former Bush-Cheney spokesman to ridicule the idea of democracy in the Middle East, in favor of a repressive dictator. President Bush, of course, centered his foreign policy around “our efforts to help the Iraqi people build a lasting democracy in the heart of the Middle East,” and often touted its ouster of the “brutal dictator” Saddam Hussein. Holt himself has championed this principle in defense of Bush’s foreign policy, telling CNN’s Candy Crowley in 2005 that Bush couldn’t set timetables for withdrawal in Iraq because “the first sign of weakness you give to the terrorists, you know, I think that you have to stay on track to democracy. Democracy is the cure in Iraq.”

Hosni Mubarak just resigned as President of Egypt, a day after giving a defiant speech that can only be seen as a huge miscalculation.

As Americans, we aren’t used to seeing political leaders miscalculate this badly. Yes, our politicians commit gaffes, get caught in scandals, and make bad political decisions. But rarely, at such a senior level, do our political leaders make major strategic political calculations that fail so spectacularly.

Let’s review how colossally dumb Mubarak was yesterday. Throughout the day rumors spread that Mubarak will resign. There are signs that the military was beginning to exert greater control. Mubarak’s absence in a senior level meeting appeared to confirm the rumors. The crowds at Tahrir square increasingly swell with the expectation that Mubarak will step down. As hour after hour went by, hope grew, leading to a party like atmosphere in Tahrir. Instead of coming out quickly during the day to dispel the rumor and tamp down expectations, Mubarak only adds fuel to the fire by not giving his speech until nearly 11 pm.

The speeches from Mubarak and Vice President Omar Suleiman yesterday were a tactical attempt to actually appease the crowd and to make further protests seem unreasonable. This backfired spectacularly. One commentator said the crowd at Tahrir went from a jubilant atmosphere to one that resembled an angry crowd of soccer fans that have just watched their team lose. In other words, Mubarak’s speech had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. It further fueled the protests, not calmed them.

To compound Mubarak’s miscalculation, the speech came just before Friday – the Muslim holy day. This is a day that has helped spawn the largest crowds of the protests, as Egyptians go from the Mosque to the street. When you have bad news to deliver, you don’t do it just before the potentially most radical day of the week. In the US, if you have bad news to deliver, you deliver it on late Friday afternoon when no one is paying attention, not early in the week.

One positive side effect of the horse-race nature of the media coverage of US politics, is that our political leaders rarely politically miscalculate to such a degree. Sure Bush invaded Iraq, but that was a policy miscalculation not a political one. Sure political leaders make bad political choices. But rarely do they ever make a high stake calculated decision that almost instantly spectacularly blows up in their face so quickly. The only one that really comes to mind is John McCain choosing to suspend his campaign in 2008.

Part of this is down to practice. Democracies force political leaders to compete with each other, to maneuver, to calculate, to think strategically. Dictatorships don’t do this. Mubarak has been in power for 30 years. He and his regime rarely, if ever, have to engage in such tactical decision-making. Rarely, if ever, do they sit down and think about how such and such a move could increase their appeal with a particular demographic. They aren’t forced to have their finger on the pulse of their people, and therefore dictatorships are prone to “let them eat cake” style gaffes and miscalculations.

In other words, the tactical gamesmanship of democratic politics, that can be so exhausting and tedious (especially here in the US), at least forces our political leaders to constantly have their finger on the pulse of the people.