Politics: The president's immigration address was little more than a cynical bid to sugarcoat amnesty for illegals as his polls sag. Maybe that's because he's not doing his real job: fostering jobs and enforcing the border.

In a speech Thursday that oozed Emma Lazarus-like treacle, the president distilled the current crisis facing states — from Arizona's massive kidnapping rate and loss of control of territory, to California's bankrupt state hospitals and schools, to Texas' near-catastrophic destruction of a dam and cartel violence spillover — as merely an issue of Americans disliking immigrants, as if there were no difference between legal and illegal.

"These (immigrants) and men and women like them across this country, remind us that immigrants have always helped to build and defend this country — and that being an American is not a matter of blood or birth," President Obama said, apparently forgetting that the people he was describing were legal immigrants.

His inability to admit this is a sign that he's adopted the narrative of the politically muscular open-borders lobby. As his popularity fades and November's midterm election approaches, he's now pandering for Latino votes.

It's clear enough by his past statements: He declared last April 30 that amnesty had zero chance of passing in Congress and wasn't worth the political effort. "I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem," he said then.

But as his popularity fell, he told Arizona Sen. John Kyl on June 18, in words heard by others, that Arizona's border security would be held a political hostage to amnesty.

"The problem is ... if we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support 'comprehensive immigration reform,'" Kyl explained at a meeting held in an Arizona border town.

And even in Thursday's speech, the president admitted that his proposals for immigration reform "cannot pass without Republican votes," which he knows he won't get.

So Obama's sudden interest in what's euphemistically called "comprehensive immigration reform" can only be one thing: a bid to shore up poll numbers as elections near. A Rasmussen poll showed 32% of voters strongly approving of Obama when he vowed not to pursue immigration reform. Today it's about 26%.

With trouble like that, it's not surprising to see him looking to energize special interest groups, even with a bill he knows can't pass.

The problem is, placing electoral politics above governing amounts to a diversion from his own responsibilities as president.

In characterizing Americans who only want existing laws enforced as racists, attention gets diverted from the fact that the president isn't doing his job of protecting our borders.

In his speech, the president set up his straw men and knocked them down.

He then set out his own idea — amnesty, with a few wrist-slaps for those who break the law — as a reasonable compromise between a pure amnesty and a systematic roundup of 12 million illegals.

It's a false choice, because there are no advocates of full amnesty outside the extreme academic left, and nobody seeks mass deportation. The real issue is that existing federal laws, passed and on the books, are being ignored. That's why Arizona made a law to ensure that the state enforces them. And other states are following.

The president denounced Arizona's new immigration law, falsely claiming as the amnesty lobby does that Arizona police could stop anyone on the basis of skin color alone. Not true.

It all points to a political agenda whose main aim is to win votes for the president's party. It reeks of politics — and that politics, awfully enough, comes at the expense of the most basic governing leadership required of a president.