News-Record.com

I spent much too much time yesterday dealing with Elizabeth Dole's campaign over the meaning of a 2001 change in requirements to receive a North Carolina driver's license.

The original point of contention, and some of the ensuing exchanges, are recounted in my column posted here yesterday.

Specifically at issue is Dole's statement made in Saturday's debate that opponent Kay Hagan, a state senator, voted to make it easier for illegal immigrants to get a North Carolina driver's license. I labeled that assertion false.

After much back-and-forth, I wrote a clarification for our op-ed page today. That was a concession to the Dole campaign based on my eventual conclusion that Dole's criticism of Hagan's vote was neither false nor true.

The Dole camp insists it is true because applicants no longer were required to present a social security card to get a driver's license but were allowed by the 2001 change to give a taxpayer ID number, which illegal immigrants easily could obtain. But the catch is, applicants were never denied a driver's license before then for not having a social security number.

Nevertheless, I gleaned from the Dole campaign that it will continue to say that Hagan voted to make it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. This is a tenuous claim, which, as I learned, can be argued all day long without resolution. Furthermore, it's very unlikely that the legislature in 2001 intended to make it easier for illegal immigrants to gain driver's licenses. Most legislators probably didn't think about it much at all.

This was a provision tucked into a large appropriations bill. When political researchers go fishing, they can cast their line far, wide and deep. Every paragraph in a piece of legislation hundreds of pages long can be pulled up and thrown onto the beach as an example of poor judgment or worse. It's a lousy way to engage in an exchange of ideas.

On the other hand, this happened because of bad legislating. The provision altering driver's license requirements had no business being hidden in an appropriations bill. Someone stuck it in there to win approval without scrutiny or debate. That someone was undoubtedly higher up the leadership chain than Hagan, but she's saddled with the consequences.

I guess that's politics.