Waiting for Elian

Of the many we will think of this Thanksgiving, one will be the Cuban boy found this week on a boat off the coast of Florida. He was discovered by the American Coast Guard after the five other passengers on the rickety vessel managed to make it to freedom on American soil. No doubt the Bush administration will be thinking of him, too, and of all that the decisions made in the next few days will symbolize.

For despite all the talk of hanging chads and Jews for Buchanan, there are those of us who've long felt that a major reason George W. Bush prevailed in Florida in the 2000 election was the pre-dawn raid in which armed agents dispatched by the Clinton-Gore administration dragged young Elian Gonzalez out of the community of free Cuban exiles in Miami and began the process that sent him back to Communist Cuba.

Asked about the Elian case by Jim Lehrer on April 27, 2000, Mr. Bush made clear that he understood what was at stake. "The picture in the newspaper, it just seems so un-American to me, the picture of the guy storming the house with a scared little boy there," Mr. Bush said. He went on to speak of a judge in Florida whose parents in Cuba put him on an airplane when he was six or seven years old and said, as Mr. Bush put it, "see you later, son, we love you, we hope to join you."

Then, the man who was shortly to be elected president went on, "But they got him out of this, this country where there's no freedom, and he came here. And I had a long talk with him about the situation. He said, you've got to understand, he said, that this boy can't go back to Cuba — at least in his mind — he can't go back to Cuba, because he's not going to realize the wonderful freedoms I've realized; I've come from orphaned child, so to speak, to now political leader in the state of Florida; I want this boy to have the same freedom."

Any doubts the voters of Florida may have had left with respect to their view on this matter were dispelled when the attorney general who oversaw the predawn raid for the Clinton-Gore administration, Janet Reno, ran this year for governor of the Sunshine State. Ms. Reno didn't even win the Democratic primary. Now the boy discovered on the boat off Florida Tuesday is being likened to Elian Gonzalez for obvious reasons.

The five Cubans who made it ashore set foot on free soil at Key West. When the Coast Guard found the 13-year-old boy, it moved him to a sounder craft. The boy spent the night on a Coast Guard cutter pending a decision on whether he would be returned to Cuba or brought to America, but he was taken ashore Tuesday, the AP quotes the Guard spokeswoman, Danielle DeMarino, as saying.

It was also via boat, in a passage filled with risk, that so many New Yorkers or their parents or grandparents came to this country. It is why so many of us felt a sense of shame when Elian Gonzalez was sent back. His story and that of the lad just found off Florida are remarkably resonant with those who arrived on these shores — also in rickety boats — nearly 400 years ago and who established the feast that we will mark again tomorrow of giving thanks for all that we were lucky enough to find here.