Change: Obama to meet with Arizona’s governor after all; Update: L.A. County votes to boycott Arizona

Three days ago he said he’d be too busy to do it. Three days later, after a weekend of stories about BP and Sestak and the Gaza flotilla and poll after poll after poll showing support for Arizona’s law, The One needs some good press. This’ll help for 24 hours.

President Obama intends to meet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday, a White House official told FoxNews.com, after criticism mounted over the president’s refusal to meet her while she is in Washington this week…

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican who helped draft Arizona’s SB 1070, called Obama’s refusal to meet with Brewer “an insult.”

“He’s willing to have a beerfest with an officer in Cambridge after he misspoke,” Pearce told Fox News on Tuesday, referring to a photo-op the president held last summer after he incited a feud over the bias of a police officer who arrested a black professor at the front door to his home.

“He misspoke on this bill also and he’s not willing to meet with the governor of the state of Arizona?” Pearce said.

We already know what she’s planning to say to him and we’ve got a pretty good idea of what he wants to say to her, so apart from a perfunctory statement afterwards that they both agree that more needs to be done to secure the border, don’t expect anything productive to come out of this. It’s good optics for Brewer especially, since it polishes her image as the populist messenger who’s delivering hard truths about border enforcement to an out-of-touch D.C., but The One will get a tiny bit of “see, I’m taking the problem seriously” mileage from it too. The latest numbers? 67 percent of likely voters tell Rasmussen they support sending troops to the border and 66 percent of registered voters tell Quinnipiac they want border security to have priority over assimilating illegals into American society. Even in deep blue California, 50 percent of registered voters support Arizona’s law compared to 43 percent who oppose it. If only there was a candidate running out there willing to stand up on behalf of pro-enforcement Democrats. Hmmmmm.

Update: If Obama has any inclination to do something productive at this meeting — which, I realize, he doesn’t — a gentle denunciation of this nonsense would go a long way. According to one of the polls I linked above, the current split on whether boycotts are a bad idea versus a good one is … 76/12. It’s smart politics, champ. Take advantage.

Blowback