It’s not about justice; it’s about winning.
By John Derbyshire, NR contributing editor. National Review. 6/01/00 6:50 p.m.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the request by relatives of Elián González that the boy be granted an asylum hearing. Elián's chances of growing up in the U.S., in the care of the only people now alive that have shown an un-coerced
willingness to raise him, are now very slender. He remains shielded from the horrors of American materialism at the private estates. Battalions of U.S. government employees ensure that he is not troubled by the attentions of anyone not duly authorized by Fidel Castro. A contingent of "classmates"
and "schoolteachers" from Cuba has been shipped in to begin his remolding from an American kid into a good Cuban citizen — which is to say, a depersonalized cog in the great machine of state power. A staff of Soviet-trained psychiatrists is on hand to administer any necessary
medications.
Setting aside the fact that a child has been taken by force from people who care about him and delivered to people who are merely following orders; and setting aside too the shocking and humiliating spectacle of our once-proud nation skipping and dancing to a tune played by the Leninist dictator
of a poverty-stricken Caribbean sinkhole; the Castro-Clinton operation now nearing complete success has revealed some distressing things about our national life. The worst of those things is that a vigorous executive, if it can depend on the support of a politicized judiciary, a sympathetic media,
and a party in Congress unwilling to place any considerations at all above partisan solidarity, can do anything it wants to do.
In retrospect there was never any danger for the administration in acting as it did. The legal warrant under which Elián was seized from his Miami home on April 22nd was now, it is widely agreed, obtained under false pretenses. The "negotiations" that Janet Reno's Justice
Department was engaged in with the boy's relatives were being conducted in perfect bad faith. Elián's father — from what we know of their relationship prior to Elián's leaving Cuba, "sperm donor" would be a more accurate designation — never showed any interest in
raising his son until Fidel sat him down for a little chat. The boy was contented in Miami, and in no danger that anyone — anyone not part of the Castro-Clinton circle — has been able to identify. None of this matters, and they knew it would not matter. The whole sorry tale of Elián
González has been a demonstration of how clever elites can game the system. Feed the right stories to the media; know which judges can be relied on to do your will; make sure your party in Congress is solid, with no independent minds (and that the opposition party is gutless); and you can do
anything you want. This is not something that Clinton and his cronies learned from the Elián González affair; they have known it all along.
It was many times remarked during the recent proceedings to impeach this President that when matters reached a similar stage during the Watergate crisis, it was Republicans who were urging Nixon to go, feeling that he had overstepped the bounds of propriety. How quaint! It would be consoling to
think that if the present gang can be removed and some leaders of principle installed, we might return to those former notions of decency and propriety in high office, and to a genuine separation of powers in which judges, congresspersons and executive officers watch each other gimlet-eyed for any
sign that one branch of government might attempt to usurp the prerogatives of another. Perhaps we shall; but it is at least equally likely that the corruption of our institutions is deep and permanent — that future Chief Executives will not repudiate the kinds of malefactions we have witnessed
here, but will seek to imitate them. Nothing succeeds like success.
"Well, they have got away with it," remarked a colleague on hearing the Court of Appeals decision. Yes, they have. Why should we be surprised? Getting away with it — gaming the system — is what this new breed of politicians do so supremely well. How many of them are there?
And how many aspiring ones out there in the heartland, watching and learning? Ten or twenty years from now, our populace torpid with wealth, the brains of our judges addled with theory, our representatives checking their polls hourly on hand-held Internet displays, how much more will our executive
be able to get away with? I guess we shall find out.
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