There is something to be said for sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the dust to settle. For instance, Scott Brown took a few lumps from conservative Republican/Tea Party types for being a bit too much like Switzerland during the debt ceiling mess. But, at the end of the day, running from the room screaming didn’t seem like such a bad approach.

In fact, there’s a famous crack about newspaper columnists, most of whom spend their professional lives above the fray. The wisdom suggests that the pundits sit high on the mountain watching the battle – and then go down and shoot the wounded.

The third-party, twice-removed, detached, bloodless approach to the current immigration mess seems to be working fairly well in Massachusetts. While the actors are playing their parts and hitting their marks and reading well from the approved scripts, there is little of the fire and brimstone and angst you might find in an Arizona or Texas or, for some strange reason, Georgia.

Gov. Deval Patrick, communicating through his public safety secretary, roused himself to be “dubious” of the new federal crackdown on illegal immigrants. Once he realized that it was cool and progressive to be against the program, he warned of “a serious risk of racial profiling” and the theoretical reluctance of immigrant neighborhoods to cooperate with the cops in other crime-fighting ventures.

Even with that, Patrick seemed uncomfortable – or at least unenthusiastic – about expending much political capital on the matter. And that was alright. It’s that kind of an issue.

Can’t Decide Which Side

As several states resist cooperating with the federal effort to screen every single arrested human being for potential immigration irregularities, others are happy to rid themselves of folks who not only are on-site illegally, but have committed some sort of sin to get themselves hooked up with the law enforcement juggernaut.

It is an awkward and confusing moment on the liberal side of the house; the Obama administration has cranked up the deportation machine to rid the nation of 700,000 illegal immigrants. But even here, the White House has expressed little of the enforcement enthusiasm you might hear from a rural sheriff in a cowboy state.

Patrick spiffed up his progressive credentials this summer with energetic support for resident-rate tuition for illegal immigrants at state colleges and universities. This was another immigration-related issue where he could have hid under his desk, but instead came out strong.

Unless you’re a wildly eager advocate on one “side” or the other of the immigration debate, the instinct is to find middle ground, or bury yourself underground until the issue goes away.

Even the Boston Globe, proud of its “progressive” credentials, cranked out a weak-kneed editorial, thundering that it was an “open question” whether the “Secure Communities” federal crackdown was good or bad for law enforcement. When the opinion page starts with the “on the one, and, on the other hand” approach to an issue, you know it’s time to take a deep breath.

Even poor Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has been all over the place on the federal crackdown, ranging from enthusiasm to a decision to withdraw Boston cops from the program.

The enthusiasm, lack of enthusiasm, or indifference toward the federal crackdown in particular – and illegal immigration in general – is difficult to predict, based on many of the normal political or cultural markers. Alabama, which doesn’t have enough foreign-born residents (legal or illegal) to manufacture a decent Boston ethnic street festival, is a hotbed of anti-immigrant sentiment,

Yale and New York University law professor Peter Schuck described the landscape in a New York Times essay with the kind of middle ground stance that most politicians would enjoy, if the game were played that way. “A flawed deportation program is worth the effort to improve it,” he wrote. “Much of the strife over Secure Communities is simply political…”

When all is said and done, Massachusetts might prove to be a good laboratory for a docile enforcement-tinkering experiment. As Globe columnist Lawrence Harmon noted, “Bostonians suffer more aggravation from neighbors who steal their parking spots during winter storms than they do from illegal immigrants.”