DURING AN APRIL 4 press conference in the Capitol, Dick Armey, the House majority leader, was asked whether Congress should get involved in the dispute over Elian Gonzalez. “I think Congress has done a good job of restraining itself,” replied Armey. “While we still feel some sort of residual responsibility to be alert to protecting this child’s safety and security and rights, . . . I know of nobody in the House or Senate leadership that is anxious to . . . interject ourselves here.”
What Armey sees as the GOP’s commendable reticence, however, can also be construed as the party’s abdication on the issue of the day. From the Thanksgiving morning when Elian was retrieved three miles off the coast of Florida, congressional Republicans could have mounted a campaign highlighting precisely why this 6-year-old should not be returned to a decaying dictatorship that his mother gave her life trying to escape. Indeed, they could have sought to pass legislation giving him permanent residency status, which would have taken the case away from the immigration authorities and made it a pure custody dispute. Instead, the overwhelming majority of them have spent the past four-plus months saying, and doing, nothing.
For a party that not long ago mustered the courage to impeach a president in the face of polls showing the public opposed to the move, this silence is remarkable. Elian’s extraordinary situation created a rare opportunity for the GOP to show leadership and set the terms of debate on an issue that transfixed the nation. But most Republicans have preferred to treat the subject of Elian the way they would treat a migraine headache: take two aspirin and hope it goes away.
There have been exceptions, of course. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Tom DeLay in the House, and Connie Mack and Bob Smith in the Senate, have been outspoken advocates for measures that would enhance Elian’s chances of remaining in the United States. DeLay in particular has been on the offensive. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on April 5, he pronounced “the government’s treatment of Elian to be the lowest point of the Clinton administration’s tenure.” John McCain has also spoken out. “We should have been more forceful in our advocacy of his remaining in this country,” he told me.
But other members of the GOP leadership haven’t shown any such initiative. Trent Lott has been extremely supportive of the efforts by Mack and Smith, but some senators believe he could have used his perch as Senate majority leader to rally more support for keeping Elian in the United States. As for the speaker, Denny Hastert, his office declared last week that there are no plans to move any Elian-related legislation. And one of the speaker’s Illinois colleagues, representative Ray LaHood, told me Hastert “wants to avoid this issue like the plague.”
I encountered similar sentiments speaking with more than a dozen rank-and-file congressional Republicans last week. Most displayed a combination of indifference and naivete about the Elian issue, saying that because their constituents weren’t ginned up about it, they hadn’t given it much attention. Or they robotically declared Elian should join his father, regardless of the circumstances. A few even said openly what seemed to be on the minds of many: While they might like to call for keeping Elian in this country, they’d chosen not to because national polls showed majorities favoring reunification with the boy’s father.
Many in the GOP also begged off on the grounds that they didn’t want to “politicize” the issue. But as a Wall Street Journal editorial noted on April 6, the genie is already out of the bottle. Fidel Castro has milked the issue for political gain from day one. And domestically, it has been politicized by the flip-flop of Al Gore and the militant anti-anti-communism of Democrats like Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel. Even George W. Bush has jumped into the fray.
Yet the GOP-controlled House has never held so much as a committee hearing on Elian. Why? One explanation is that Lamar Smith, who supports reductions in immigration, chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction. Whatever has caused it, this inactivity speaks volumes. Since Congress reconvened in January, the House Republican conference has discussed the dispute over Elian only once.
In the end, inaction begets impotence. Because the GOP hasn’t made the case for keeping Elian in the United States, it can’t muster the votes in either chamber to pass a bill giving the boy permanent residency. And so last week, when Democrats could have been thrown on the defensive if forced to debate a high-profile issue on which they differ with Gore, Republicans did nothing, fearing a filibuster in the Senate and defeat in the House. That in turn gave a pass to the White House, which didn’t have to expend any political capital opposing a residency bill.
The current fear being expressed by Bob Smith and others is that the Elian saga will play itself out before a vote is held.
“After all he’s been through,” says Smith, “the least Elian deserves is a vote on his status by Congress, and a veto or an endorsement by the White House.” Indeed, declaring one’s opposition to a residency bill is infinitely easier than actually voting against it, or vetoing it.
“On a difficult issue like this,” says Mack, “when members don’t know whether there is going to be a vote or not, they are not inclined to tell you how they are going to vote.”
As for the famously flexible president, he claims to remain opposed to the Smith-Mack residency bill. But senator Bob Graham, the bill’s Democratic sponsor and a Gore ally, recently told the Fox News Channel that if the bill passed Congress, Clinton would sign it. Thanks to the Republicans, he’ll never have to make the choice.
Matthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
