President Dobbs?

Lou Dobbs isn't going to run for president, but it's not crazy to think that he could and do pretty well. In the American marketplace of ideas, no major candidate is offering a major rethink of globalization, that fuses the criticisms of left and right the way Dobbs does. In Europe, candidates abound with anti-free-trade and anti-immigration planks that reflect the view of sizeable chunks of the electorate. Here in the US, those issues are essentially off the table. Among the big six candidates--Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, Romney--none wants to slow the pace of free trade agreements and none is for the kind of draconian measures regarding immigration that Dobbs favors. Major newspaper editorial pages ranging from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal are in pretty much the same place.

In his "60 Minutes" interview this Sunday Dobbs goes to a place that's pretty close to beyond the pale. He doesn't expressly call for deporting illegal immigrants from the United States but he says something I've never heard any politician say: It's possible. Personally, I think that's nuts. We can't secure the Green Zone, for gosh sakes; you want to go door to door across America looking for illegals? Moreover, it's wrong to contemplate a crazed round up, for what it would do to our economy, to those who have built lives here, to every one enforcing the dragnet (talk about not supporting the troops) and to the American character. But Dobbsism is out there; just listen to talk radio or people who don't think the trade deficit is an irrelevant number.

Tonight's Republican debate will have some elements of Dobbism. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo is an anti-immigration gadfly and Duncan Hunter, former chair of the House Armed Services committee, is a big advocate of a wall with Mexico. But no one has Dobbs's build-a-wall conservatism combined with his lefty, anti-corporate populism. (He bashes executive pay almost as much as he does Mexico.)

I don't agree with Dobbs on most things but I am glad he's on air every night--haranguing, harping on things the TV business shows, enomored as they are of a 13,000 Dow, don't cover. The presidential candidates need to come up with answers to Dobbs's questions and some good responses to his nuttier ideas, like this crazy one about mass deportations, or someone else will.