Obama recently met with a group of those advocates. One of them later told the Washington Post that the president said to them, “In another life, I’d be on the other side of the table.” By that Obama meant that in his old days as a community organizer, pressing for the “refugee” rights would be just the sort of thing he would do.

Now, however, Obama is the man in charge. Maybe his heart is still with the activists across the table. Maybe it’s not. But whatever the case, as a Democratic president with Democratic supporters in Congress and liberal supporters in the press and various activist groups, Obama has no incentive to act like Sheriff Joe when it comes to the border crisis. He knows that the more slowly he moves on deportations, the greater the chance that the thousands who have come to the United States will stay.

So chalking up the president’s performance to incompetence doesn’t tell the whole story. Everybody who really matters to the president, politically and perhaps emotionally, is pushing against strong action at the border. Why would he alienate them, and ignore his own inclinations, to do what Republicans want?