( CNN ) -- There is something deeply troubling about President Obama 's decision to grant legal safe haven to unauthorized immigrants by executive order . It is n't the underlying policy that is troubling . Just the opposite . We have known for years that we would never deport some 11 million people from our midst . Many have become hard-working , productive members of our society , and Congress , working with the White House , should long ago have provided them a safe pathway out of the shadows . In that sense , this policy is good . One wonders indeed why the President , having decided to take the plunge , did n't go further and build a pathway to fuller benefits such as health care for those who establish a solid record of work and good behavior . Nor is it even the questionable legality that disturbs . On many occasions during our history , presidents have tested the boundaries of their constitutional power through executive orders : Lincoln 's suspension of habeas corpus , his Emancipation Proclamation , Franklin D. Roosevelt 's creation of the Works Progress Administration , FDR 's awful internment of Japanese-Americans , and Harry Truman 's integration of the armed forces were all accomplished through controversial executive orders . During the 19th century , conventional wisdom held that presidents had only as much authority as the constitution explicitly granted ; Teddy Roosevelt famously flipped that proposition on its head -- unless the Constitution explicitly forbids , he argued , the president has implied authority to act , especially as commander-in-chief . Many of his successors have agreed and usually the courts have gone along with them . Even so , President Obama 's executive order on immigration seems to move us into uncharted , dangerous waters . It is one thing for a president like Lincoln or FDR to act unilaterally in national emergencies . In nearly all the big examples of the past -- like the Emancipation Proclamation -- they were also acting as commander-in-chief . As the one foremost responsible for protecting the nation 's existence , a president as commander-in-chief has long been recognized as having inherent powers that stretch well beyond those of normal governance . Not an emergency . But the challenges of immigration policy do not represent a national emergency , nor do they touch upon the military authorities of a president . Rather , they represent the chronic , abysmal failures of politicians in Washington to govern well from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue . They helped create this immigration mess over a long number of years and working together , they have a public duty to solve it . The White House has repeatedly pointed to immigration-related executive orders issued by past presidents , notably Ronald Reagan and George H.W . Bush , to support the legality of President Obama 's order and to palliate its partisan sting . Both the executive orders cited , however , can be distinguished from the case at hand . Reagan granted amnesty to 100,000 undocumented immigrants to close a loophole in the comprehensive immigration reform bill passed in 1986 . Bush 's order , which granted amnesty to at most 1.5 million people ( although the actual number who benefited is likely much smaller ) , also attempted to clean up a piece of legislation . As Mark Krikorian writes in National Review , the Reagan and Bush examples were presidents trying to implement congressional directives , as is constitutionally permissible , whereas the current action is the President telling Congress `` I 'm going to implement my own directives . '' While the President 's impatience is understandable and his anger at Republican intransigence is well placed , that does not justify an abandonment of traditional ways of addressing hard public problems . Against the spirit of the Constitution . One can argue whether this executive order is legal , but it certainly violates the spirit of the founders . They intentionally focused Article One of the Constitution on the Congress and Article Two on the president . That is because the Congress is the body charged with passing laws and the president is the person charged with faithfully carrying them out . In effect , the Congress was originally seen as the pre-eminent branch and the president more of a clerk . The president 's power grew enormously in the 20th century but even so , the Constitution still envisions Congress and the president as co-equal branches of government -- or as the scholar Richard Neustadt observed , co-equal branches sharing power . For better or worse , Americans have always expected that in addressing big , tough domestic issues , Congress and the president had to work together to find resolution . For a president to toss aside such deep traditions of governance is a radical , imprudent step . When a president in day-to-day operations can decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore , where are the limits on his power ? Where are the checks and balances so carefully constructed in the Constitution ? If a Democratic president can cancel existing laws on immigration , what is to prevent the next Republican from unilaterally canceling laws on health care ? A bad way to start with new Congress . Coming on the heels of midterm elections that were a clear call for a change of course in Washington , starting in the White House , this is also a discouraging way to open the final years of this presidency . A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds that by 53-40 % , Americans feel positive about the election results ; by 56-33 % , they want Congress to set policy for the country , not the President ; by 57-40 % they favor a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants but by 42-32 % , they disapprove of Obama overhauling immigration through executive order . Why is n't the White House listening to the public ? In retrospect , it would have been far better if coming out of the elections , the President had said he had promised he would act through executive order before the end of the year , but in light of the election results , he would work with the new Congress for six months . If there were no legislation , he would act on his own . That would have been a much fairer proposition , would have started out with Republicans on better footing , and would have rallied the public behind him if the GOP refused to cooperate . Sadly , we instead have an action from the White House that will cast a dark shadow over prospects for legislative cooperation , falls short of what the immigrant population had hoped and steers us into deep , unknown waters in our governance .
David Gergen : President Obama 's stance on immigration is a troubling move . Gergen says Obama 's action is of questionable legality and sets a bad precedent . I want the parties to come together and ask Congress to set precedent , he says .