I Think I've Talked to This Guy

So now at work whenever something pisses me or my Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Nameless to Protect His Identity off, we scream "MEXICAN FUCKING TRUCK DRIVERS! ARE YOU SHITTING ME?" Needless to say, this guy has my vote.

"Not Fewer Guns, But Safer Bullets"

Back to the future

Today's New York Times brings us an op-ed from Clinton-era FDA apparatchik David G. Adams arguing the need for "A Two Cigarette Society": that is, the introduction of cigarettes with little to no nicotine. This innovation is necessary to limit the harm done by underage smoking, an activity that Adams argues is initiated by the self-reinforcing need-to-fit-in/peer pressure tandem, but becomes a habit long outlasting the faddishness of adolescence owing to the highly addictive nature of the nicotine concentrations present in cigarettes. Adams believes that the regulatory will isn't there to force cigarette manufacturers to reduce nicotine in all cigarettes, but that by essentially bifurcating the cigarette market - that is, prohibiting the sale of nicotine-laden cigarettes to people born after a certain date - we can filter down the numbers of people exposed to "addictive" cigarettes, making quitting a simpler matter and eliminating a lot of the long-term health issues associated with smoking.

Having quit smoking and lived to tell the tale, I empathize with Mr. Adams' main point: kids are going to smoke anyway, but if we started them off on cigarettes without nicotine, far more of them could quit before doing any longterm damage to their health. However, I think that there are several drawbacks to such a scheme, not least of all that it runs contrary to existing, and I think, successful, public health policy. For the past twenty years, the federal and state governments have largely pursued a three-pronged approach to reducing smoking: increasing public awareness of the health risks associated with smoking, banning smoking from places of public accommodation, and increasing taxes on tobacco products. All reliable statistical indicators have suggested that this approach works: far fewer people smoke today than did even fifteen years ago, and states that apply the most aggressive approaches usually see results commensurate with those efforts.

(A side note: it sure was sad that all of the restaurants and bars in New Jersey went out of business after the Legislature banned smoking indoors. I remember when you used to not have to go to Pennsylvania for a steak or a beer - oh wait, that's right, none of that happened. At all. Thank God we dodged that bullet.)

By mandating the introduction of nicotine-free cigarettes, however, government would be playing into the "safe" cigarette illusion, giving its tacit imprimatur to smoking. Fear of addiction plays a large part in the current avoidance model; by removing or reducing that fear, we could be encouraging more young people to pick up smoking casually. It would by naive to think that tobacco companies, with one foot already in the door, would abstain from trying to tempt this potentially lucrative new market into switching over to addictive nicotine-containing cigarettes. Furthermore, reduced nicotine levels might lead to a net longterm reduction in exposure to the hazardous aspects of smoking, but it would not remove those hazards; in fact, by potentially increasing the number of people willing to smoke in the short term, Adams' proposal could inadvertently increase the numbers of people exposed to secondhand smoke.

What is most interesting to me about Adams' piece is what it doesn't propose, or even mention in passing: why not ban the manufacture and sale of cigarettes? There are the obvious reasons, that people trot out, which usually run the gamut from personal choice ("it's a free country") to economics (in many states, such as Virginia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas, Big Tobacco remains a major employer) to the perils of outright prohibition (we don't want another War on Drugs, do we?). Admittedly, these are compelling points, and they form the basis of Adams' underlying assumption that even taking such a mild step as mandating an across-the-board reduction in nicotine is politically impossible.

Yet, while implementing a ban today is probably unfeasible, mentioning one is also seemingly verboten; rarely, if at all, do you see high profile discussion of such proposals, even hypothetically. Imagine a pro-life movement committed to restricting women's access to abortion clinics but virtually mum on the idea of making the procedure completely illegal. Such a thing would be absurd, but it is that same lack of totality that may be the defining feature of America's anti-smoking movement. Indeed, even among people most ardently opposed to smoking, it seems like conceiving of a world without cigarettes simply requires too great a leap of the imagination to be reasonably discussed. Most have an accommodationist point of view: as long as you don't smoke around me, I don't care what you do. Ostracization, as opposed to eradication.

The "you're only harming yourself" point of view, however, fails to account for the actual social and economic costs of smoking. Smokers are generally more unhealthy than non-smokers, and as a result they miss, on average, far more time from work due to sickness. Being more prone to illness, they also tend to require medical care more routinely, thus contributing to an overall increase in insurance premiums that effects non-smokers as well. As they get older, they are far more susceptible to wide range of debilitating health conditions, including heart attack, stroke, emphysema, and, of course, a cornucopia of cancers. This costs programs like Medicare millions if not billions of dollars - your tax dollars - annually. That's not factoring in the additional expenses incurred by family members and other assorted caregivers, nor the high levels of emotional duress those people experience as their loved ones are rendered completely incapable of fending for themselves.

Furthermore, the question of banning smoking has a moral dimension as well: should the government permit the sale of a product, that as a matter of its routine and proper use, invariably damages the health of the end user? After all, we prohibit the sale of recreational drugs such as a cocaine, heroin, and marijuana on the grounds that they pose a public health risk. Why shouldn't the same logic be applied to the deleterious impact of cigarette smoking? That smoking kills is not the subject of much dispute nowadays; anyone exposed to a gangrenous foot or a clogged carotid artery courtesy of the New York City Department of Health while enjoying a Mets game on SNY can attest to that. It is vaguely ridiculous that we spend millions on advertising the ill effects of tobacco and setting up quitlines, and yet you can walk into any convenience store in your neighborhood and buy a pack of cigarettes.

(Allow me to head you off at the pass, Mr. What-About-Big Macs-and-Booze? Yes, alcohol and fatty foods can be dangerous to your health. However, both of these things can be enjoyed safely in moderation; having been a pack-a-day smoker I can tell you that "moderation", for the most part, simply doesn't exist when it comes to cigarettes. Furthermore, several jurisdictions have already taken steps to reduce consumption of harmful foods: New York City has banned the use of trans fats in restaurants, and several states have banned or otherwise restricted the sale of junk foods and sodas from school cafeterias. So there.)

Ultimately, though I believe that smoking will continue to become more and more marginalized, I don't think that we will see an outright ban on cigarettes anytime in the near future. Instead, I predict an intensification of the current regime: smoking will be reduced by attrition as increasingly alarmist propaganda (seriously, gangrene?), exorbitant taxes ($9.00 a pack in NYC), and greater restrictions (bans on smoking in rental units? households with minors?) all continue to proliferate. It's a curious mirroring of the "avoision" phenomenon taking place in the legal sphere; instead of circumventing existing outmoded laws, we'll be affecting a ban on smoking in everything but name only. Unless it becomes practical to pay $30 for a pack of cigarettes that you can only smoke in a sealed room in your home (complete with its own isolated ventilation system) while running the risk of spontaneous facial rot, that is.

Holy SCHIP

It is what you think it is

The American political system is bipolar in much the same way that the world during the Cold War era was bipolar: there are two sides, diametrically opposed, that have become so powerful in their respective spheres of influence that they have managed to squeeze out any viable alternative to their competing systems. Everyone is forced to choose a side, regardless of how closely they hew to the ideology espoused by their patron; the distinctions are relatively broad (and as a result, somewhat imprecise) - liberal vs. conservative, capitalist vs. communist. Ultimately, it's a zero-sum game: a victory for one side equates to a corresponding defeat for the other. With such stakes, it is unsurprising that, as technological advances have improved the rhetorical and military arsenals available to America's political parties and the superpowers respectively, both of their competitions assumed an increasingly annihilationist cast.

In such an environment, the material and strategic value of actors and events tends to be distorted or superseded by their perceived political value: thus do Vietnam and Afghanistan, both relatively obscure nations devoid of significant resources, become vital areas of national interest for the United States and the Soviet Union respectively, worth thousands of soldiers' lives and billions of dollars. So to it is in our current political environment, where something as seemingly trivial as Hillary Clinton's laugh* can become fodder for serious debate and discussion on our news networks, in publications of note (hi dere Hendrik Hertzberg!), and across the vast expanses of the internet. For a nation that occasionally collectively professes to not have much use for the French, we are quickly adopting one of their most annoying habits: the tendency to see a quantifiable political dimension in every gesture, no matter how seemingly innocuous.

Into this no-holds-barred arena unwittingly strode Graeme Frost, aged 12, and his family. Young Graeme, disabled in a car accident when the family SUV struck a patch of black ice, delivered the Democratic radio address last week, urging President Bush to reconsider his veto of legislation expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program funded by the federal government and administered by the individual states (it is often referred to as SCHIP for that reason) that provides health care coverage to children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance. "Most kids my age probably haven't heard of CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program," said Graeme. "But I know all about it, because if it weren't for CHIP, I might not be here today."

It must be said that CHIP is not a particularly controversial program; while it was a Democratic initiative to increase its funding by $7 billion dollars annually, many Republicans, including my dipshit congressman, voted for the measure - the bills passed 68-31 and 225-204 in the Senate and House respectively. President Bush vetoed it because, after six and half years of pissing trillions of dollars away on tax cuts for the wealthy and the war in Iraq (not to mention his politically motivated trillion dollar Medicare perscription drug coverage boondoggle), he decided that the best way regain the mantle of fiscal conservatism was to screw children out of health insurance.

As you might have gathered, CHIP is also politically popular: Americans, though generally suspicious of "socialized healthcare", tend to approve of government assistance when the recipients are vulnerable populations such as the elderly, the disabled, or children. The Democrats, sensing that they had public opinion on their side, set about hammering the President on the issue, both for political gain, and in order get Bush to rescind his veto. Hardcore conservatives, who a) generally have the President's back, b) hate liberals, and c) believe that every political fight is a do-or-die contest of wills with grave strategic implications in the ongoing war for the hearts and minds of right-thinking Americans, promptly set about casting CHIP as a villainous scheme to slip "socialized medicine" in through the back door, and in the process, destabilize the system of free enterprise that has made this country great, presumably so it can be replaced by, uh, Marxism-Leninism.

Now, I don't know about the political philosophy of Graeme Frost or his family. They may in fact be dyed in the wool Democrats who hang portraits of Nancy Pelosi around the house, named the family mastiffs Bill and Hillary, and regularly tithe to MoveOn.org. I suspect, however, that they agreed to participate in the Democrats' radio address because they think that CHIP, a federal program that has immensely benefited them, is generally a good thing that should be available to more families who find themselves in similar circumstances. In other words, they're not concerned how this debate plays out politically in Ohio or Florida next year; they just know that CHIP may be the reason that their children (Graeme's sister suffered a serious brain injury in the same accident) are still alive.

Of course, the Frosts got "swift-boated." In an article for Time, Karen Tumulty, recounts the process whereby members the conservative blogosphere smeared Graeme's family, using incomplete information available on the internet to assault their credibility:

It started over the weekend, when a blogger calling himself Icwhatudo put up a post on the conservative website Freerepublic.com noting what he had found by scavenging around the internet: that Graeme attends a private school, lives in a remodeled house near one that had sold for $485,000 in March and is the child of parents whose wedding was announced in the New York Times. The post also noted that his father purchased a $160,000 commercial space in 1999.

"One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business... maybe money can be found for other things," the blogger wrote. "Maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes."

According to Tumulty's account, the rhetoric intensified from there:

Typical of the tone was what Mark Steyn wrote on National Review Online: "Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the 'needy' in America, then no one is not needy." Nameless commenters to conservative blogs were even harsher. "Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens," wrote one one on Redstate.com, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun. "Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."

"Ah, but is it true?" you ask. "Is the federal government lavishing my hard-earned tax dollars on a perfectly well-to-do dilettante woodworker and his burgher household when they can well afford to pay for their own health insurance?" Well, no:

It turns out, however, that not everything about the Frosts' life pops up on a Google search. While Graeme does attend a private school, he does so on scholarship. Halsey Frost is a self-employed woodworker; he and his wife say they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year to provide for their family of six. Their 1936 rowhouse was purchased in 1990 for $55,000. It was vacant and in a run-down neighborhood that has improved since then, in part because of people like themselves who took a chance. It is now assessed at $263,140, though under state law the value of that asset is not taken into account in determining their eligibility for SCHIP. And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.

As Tumulty succinctly puts it, "the Frosts are precisely the kind of people that the SCHIP program was intended to help."

I suppose it would be naive of me to express shock, or even disappointment, at the sight of (presumably) grown men casting anonymous aspersions about a disabled 12 year-old boy and his family from the safety of the internet. After all, the Frosts did have the temerity to publicly associate their message with the Democratic Party - the same party that voted to expand CHIP coverage in the first place. Perhaps in another era, such a benign activity - "civic engagement", I think they used to call it, even in a partisan setting - might not have earned them the same enmity and vituperation. Or perhaps the disgust was alway there, and the internet has just allowed people to voice it in a convenient, expedient fashion.

Either way, it's immaterial. The game is a game no longer; games have rules, and it becomes clearer and clearer by the moment that whatever rules of civility and decorum that may have bound our political processes have been progressively stripped away as America's lurid appetite for bile has increased. The real question is when the corrosiveness of the political process will begin to seriously undermine our ability to govern and be governed harmoniously; what happens to the social contract when we become so convinced of our opponents' perfidy that we feel that we no longer have a moral obligation to adhere to the bargain when they are in power? Granted, I am being alarmist; I suspect that the Republic won't be toppled by rudeness anytime soon. But it is an intriguing scenario, one brought just a little bit closer to fruition when we can't even bring ourselves to be polite to a 7th grader.

*That's right, I compared Hillary Clinton's laugh to Vietnam.

Meet the New Boss, Pt. 2

"And if they hate then let 'em hate and watch the money pile up"

For months now, observers of Russia's sclerotic democracy have wondered exactly how President Vladimir Putin would handle the transition of power imposed upon him by constitutionally mandated term limits. Most have predicted that Putin would anoint his successor, much the way that Boris Yeltsin anointed Putin before the 2000 election. The real question is how he would seek to retain his considerable influence in a new government. Now we have our answer: President Putin will head the United Russia party's ticket in the upcoming parliamentary election.

Most predictions had Putin altering the constitution to allow himself a third term as President - he certainly has the votes in the Duma (Russia's parliament) to do it - or following the model of China's Deng Xiaoping, who controlled China for nearly two decades without holding any official office. Instead, Putin has forged a compromise between these two options, allowing him to retain government office and, presumably, power while maintaining the outward appearance of the rule of law. Putin has already made noises about seeking the post of Prime Minister, suggesting that he will seek to reorient the power structure of Russia's government around this office; any doubts that his successor will be chosen solely on the basis of his subservience have thus been completely expunged. Furthermore, Russia's constitution only prohibits Putin from serving a third consecutive term as president; after he kicks around as PM for four years, he is free to seek the presidency again. This would help explain the recent elevation of Viktor Zubkov, a non-entity entirely dependent upon the Putin machine, to the Prime Minister's spot - the on-deck circle for the Russian presidency.

Western alarmists, many of whom relish the opportunity to break the well-worn rhetoric of the Cold War out of mothballs, view Putin's presidency as one long backslide to the tensions of Soviet era. Indeed, Russia has moved distinctively away from the West under Putin, bolstered both by burgeoning oil and natural gas revenues and the precipitous decline of American prestige and influence in the early 21st century. Recently, Russia has utilized its mineral wealth to blackmail its former satellites into submission, attempted to lay a rather eccentric claim to the Arctic and the valuable natural resources beneath it, and announced the resumption of round-the-clock nuclear bomber patrols - a step right out of Dr. Strangelove.

However, this increasing assertiveness does not necessarily signal a return to the dark days of runaway ideological and military competition; an antagonistic relationship with America would profit Russia very little. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, an outlaw is someone who lives beyond the law but not necessarily against it: Putin has adhered to this formulation by detaching Russia from the Western orbit, and establishing Moscow as the center of its own system. This development is of a piece with the unfolding reality of a new multipolar world: Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, and Brussels are all rapidly developing their own spheres of influence, quickly marking the end of the brief era when Washington's global superiority and leadership were uncontested. That Putin fails to tow Washington's line says more about America's waning influence than it does about Putin's perfidy; as our ability to project power abroad is sapped away in the sands of Iraq, the price of maintaining relatively sound relations with the U.S. has swiftly declined.

The truly troubling aspect of Putin's power grab is the implications it holds for the future of constitutional democracy and the rule of law in Russia. Westerners looked at the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in the Georgian Republic and saw the triumph of liberal democracy; Putin saw in those events the triumph of the West. While never a liberal democrat to begin with, Putin has since intensified his stranglehold on authority in Russia. The oligarchs who profited most from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and hence possessed the largest concentration of power outside of the Kremlin, were intimidated into compliance with the regime by the political prosecution of billionaire oil magnate and Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky on trumped up tax evasion charges. Members of the media who have been critical of Putin's government have been brutalized and even murdered; all of these cases remain "unresolved." Even dissidents beyond Russia's borders are not beyond Putin's reach: Alexander Litvenenko, an ex-KGB officer sharply critical of the President, was famously poisoned with Polonium-210 while dining at a London sushi restaurant. Polonium is an unusual choice for a murder weapon, because it is highly traceable, both in the sense that it leaves easily detected amounts of radiation wherever it has been, and its place of original manufacture is simply determined; anyone using it would be seeking to send a message. Sure enough, both sets of clues led directly back to Russia, where the authorities stonewalled British investigators seeking further information.

What opposition the regime permits is scattered and highly ineffective. In a recent New Yorker profile of former chess world champion and opposition leader Garry Kasparov, the movement is depicted as an incoherent amalgam of radicals, social outsiders, and strident intellectuals more interested in holding kitchen table debates than any of the fundamentals of political organizing. They have collected under the banner of umbrella organization Other Russia, which seems to function as an Island of Misfit Toys in Putin's Russia. They hold their conference in a Holiday Inn, besieged by the pro-Putin Young Guards, who shower them with fake American currency and call them "political prostitutes"; "neo-Bolshevik" leader Eduard Litvinov is a "problematic partner" who bummed around America for two decades, "modeling himself on Charles Bukowski"; Vladimir Bukovsky, a prestigious former Soviet political prisoner oft-mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, delivered his speech via videotape, having resided in the UK since his release from the camps in 1976; Kasparov admits that “We’re not trying to win elections yet. It’s all about having elections, real elections.” Far from serving as an effective check on the enormously popular Putin, Other Russia's main challenge is merely remaining (or becoming) relevant enough to prevent Russia from becoming a one party state.

Further complicating matters is the degree to which Putin has managed to make the state an extension of himself. He has peopled the top layers of government with his former KGB colleagues, though as Putin himself pointed out, making reference to the Lenin-era Soviet secret police, "Once a Chekist, always a Chekist." Indeed, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti has not only survived the collapse of the Soviet regime (of which it was perhaps the defining feature), but has developed into the dominant institution in Russian political life: there are credible estimates that have "former" KGB men in 60% of all Kremlin jobs. The state controlled media serves as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin; the independent media, controlled as it is by oligarchs loyal to Putin, is little better. High level positions with state-owned enterprises such as Gazprom (natural gas) and Rosneft (oil) are lucrative baubles handed out to regime loyalists. The Duma, intended as a check on executive power, is instead in thrall to Putin; Russia's regional governors, once elected by their constituents, are now directly appointed by Putin, as are the mayors of St. Petersburg and Moscow.

One thing remains perfectly clear: as long as Russia's economic prosperity continues apace, Putin will likely enjoy all the domestic support he requires to remain in power. I don't necessarily buy the argument that Russia requires a strong man to govern it - this is the same brand of Western condescension that suggests that democracy can never take hold in the Arab world. However, in the centuries that Russia has been a distinct polity, it has almost constantly been governed by autocrats: 300 years of Romanovs, followed by another 74 years of communism. Something approximating liberal democracy has been in place on two occasions: the eight month interlude between Tsar Nicholas' abdication and the October Revolution in 1917 when the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky ruled, and the eight years of the Yeltsin era. Neither of these experiences was particularly auspicious: Kerensky, who continued to prosecute the highly unpopular First World War, was unable to halt the collapse of Russian society that had forced the Tsar's departure, and throughout Yeltsin's presidency the nation was wracked continuously by economic crises, corruption, and gangsterism. It's safe to say that these antecedents may not have sufficiently whetted Russia's appetite for democracy to the point where they would trade in the known quantity of Putin's rule - marked by general stability and increased prosperity - for it.

I guess they don't know what they're missing.

Rip Van Kemp

"Sir, 'The Shocker' is with your pinky, not your ring finger."

Former Congressman, Bob Dole VP candidate, Buffalo Bills QB, and supply-sider Jack Kemp (R-NY) made either an astute or completely oblivious observation in last Wednesday's Washington Post. The article, "Debate No-Shows Worry GOP Leaders", addressed the refusal of leading Republican presidential candidates to attend debates targeted at primarily African-American and Latino voters. Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt "Way!" Romney, and John McCain have all begged off a debate hosted by talk show host Tavis Smiley to be held at Baltimore's Morgan State University and aired on PBS; all save for John McCain also skipped a similar forum broadcast on the Spanish-language network Univision. Concerned that the GOP could be sabotaging its future electoral prospects by essentially bricking itself off from the growing electoral influence of minority groups, Congressman Kemp said:

We sound like we don't want immigration; we sound like we don't want black people to vote for us. What are we going to do -- meet in a country club in the suburbs one day? If we're going to be competitive with people of color, we've got to ask them for their vote.

The cheap laugh here is obviously the idea that Republicans don't already meet in a country club in the suburbs. Arguably, a not insignificant reason for the Democrats' 2006 victories was that voters in swing districts and states perceived their representatives to be out of touch, pigging out on the tabs of K Street lobbyists instead of addressing their constituents' needs and concerns. The GOP, which had swept into Washington in 1994 with a mandate to purge the excesses of Democrat's nearly 40 year reign, left town twelve years later as the lap dog of America's wealthy corporate elite.

Kemp's criticism is particularly resonant because he is not the first Republican to evoke the Arcadian imagery of the country club to characterize the party's aloofness. In fact, "Country Club Republican" is the gentlemanly pejorative for practitioners of the socially moderate-cum-liberal, business-friendly but economically "responsible", non-ideological Republicanism practiced by the Dwight Eisenhowers, Nelson Rockefellers, and Tom Keans of the world. The movement conservatives who currently control the GOP came to power deriding these Mayflower-descended elites, sensing that they were not sufficiently dedicated to a socially conservative, anti-tax message - the message the party has used to successfully woo millions of working class whites into the GOP fold. The Country Club set has managed to retain control of the Republican Party across the Northeast, where the mainstream GOP message holds the least appeal, but their grip even here is tenuous; they are being squeezed into irrelevance by the increasing regional dominance of the Democratic Party, a development rank-and-file Republicans are attributing more and more to insufficient ideological purity amongst their leadership.

Kemp's argument is merely a logical extension of this viewpoint. Taking the place of patrician stuffed shirts is the burgeoning "if you're white, you're right" mentality of Republican leaders, reacting both to the hard line anti-illegal immigration positions of the rank-and-file, as well as an implicit anti-urbanism that is now virtually a plank in the party platform. Republican presidential candidates, concerned with appealing to primary voters, are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate their bona fides on the immigration issue. This manifests itself not only in a game of "see-if-you-can-top-this" vis-a-vis who's immigration plan is more draconian, but as a rhetorical firefight where no one (again, save John McCain, and even he's trying to change the subject) wants to be seen ceding a sliver of ground. Skipping the Univision debate was a short term tactical maneuver designed to avoid the appearance of pandering to an audience unschooled in the Mother tongue - a voting block unlikely to provide much support in, say, the Iowa caucuses.

Essentially Republicans find themselves straddling the fault line between the discontent of their traditional white base and the fact that Latinos represent the fastest growing segment of the American electorate. While GOP candidates are quick to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration, and swifter still to decry overt xenophobia or racism, the fact of the matter is that the ugly tenor of the debate is still audible through the static. Many Latinos who are either American citizens or reside here legally fear that the tremendous gains their community has made, economically and in terms of larger social acceptance, could be eradicated by a heavy handed enforcement-oriented approach towards illegal aliens. By identifying itself too strongly with anti-illegal immigration policies, the GOP could unintentionally signal to Latinos that it is either uninterested in their votes or actively working against their best interests - a perception mirroring the attitude of African-Americans towards the party. Unlike African-Americans, however, the GOP cannot concede the Latino vote to the Democrats without dealing a severe blow to the party's ability to compete, especially in swing states where Latino voters sometimes form a significant proportion of the electorate.

Kemp's concerns, however, are not merely a reaction to the arithmetic of political expediency. If the Republican party is to survive as a viable political organization deep into the 21st century, it is going to have to not only win a greater share of the minority vote, it is going to have to convert more minorities to Republicanism. President Bush, who carried 40% of the Latino vote in 2004, was attuned to this distinction, effectively highlighting the links between his governing philosophy and the traditional cultural conservatism and strong work ethic characterizing many Latino American households. He has also prioritized the placement of African-Americans and Latinos in positions of prominence in his administration: Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as his Secretaries of State, ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Secretary of Education Rod Paige. One can characterize these appointments as mere tokenism, not indicative of the overall Bush track record, but it should be acknowledged that tokenism is certainly not confined solely to the Republican party, and that even token appointments can send a strong signal about a person or party's political values.

Fascinatingly, Bush's most ambitious attempt to enhance Republican prestige with Latinos was his plan to dispose with the illegal immigration issue once and for all - the very same plan that all of the Republicans hoping to succeed him (again, save John McCain) are defining themselves in opposition to. The President proposed an amnesty program that would offer the estimated 12 million illegal aliens residing in the United States a path to citizenship and would establish a temporary guest worker program, permitting migrant laborers to enter and exit the U.S. legally. It's a powerful idea; by enacting such an amnesty, Bush could essentially have his own Lyndon Johnson moment, enfranchising a significant new bloc of voters while demonstrating to Latino community that the Republican Party is capable of advancing its interests. It's not precisely analogous to 1964; after all, the Democrats are unlikely to try and exploit an amnesty's polarizing effects, as the Republican Party did with the Civil Rights movement in developing the so-called "Southern Strategy." However, it would play a big role in maintaining the GOP's viability with Latino voters, preventing the Democrats from gaining an immutable political advantage. An amnesty would be a practical demonstration of the Republicans' vaunted commitment to hard work and economic opportunity; what could be better than allowing more people a shot at owning a piece of the American dream?

Bush's amnesty is, of course, dead at the hands of his fellow Republicans. Certainly I don't wish to characterize the President's plan as flawless or perhaps even the best course of action, but the policy's fate was not arrived at based upon its merits anyway. The GOP's base revolted against the very concept of an amnesty, and Republican leaders, already reeling from Iraq and scandal after scandal, decided that backing any version of the President's plan was too costly. The primary circus, with its demands for demonstrations of fidelity to the mainstream Republican program, is only serving to exacerbate the situation.

Queried about the front-runners' apparent unwillingness to address Latino and African-American audiences, one unnamed adviser to a GOP presidential candidate retorted, as only an anonymous hack can, "What's the win?" The moral response: having a presidential candidate demonstrate that he won't totally ignore roughly a quarter of the American people, a figure sure to have grown since the 2000 Census. The cynical response: you won't join the Whigs in the history books by 2050.