There They Go Again

By MARGARET CARLSON

Two groups were ecstatic when Republicans announced Elian hearings last week: the Miami relatives and Democrats. And it's not just Congress's most volatile members giddy with excitement over re-enacting The Story of Elian, but also Senate majority leader Trent Lott and Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch. Undeterred by George W. Bush's lack of enthusiasm for such partisan theatrics, Lott boasted he would get to the bottom of where the obviously hopeless negotiations stood at the time of the dawn raid. And House majority whip Tom DeLay went ballistic over the government's "jackbooted thugs." He was far more publicly incensed by U.S. marshals using guns to forestall the threatened violence of the Miami crowd than he ever was over guns used by children to slaughter their classmates.

Republicans like to chest-thump that they follow their conscience, not the polls. But it's just as likely that they're following the klieg lights out of their post-impeachment media wilderness. The Gonzalez family--who took to crossing the street to the media encampment calling out "It's time to go live," the way other families announce "It's time for dinner"--ran an enviable press operation. The loopy, frequently hospitalized Marisleysis was hysterical over supposedly doctored photos of a smiling Elian but savvy enough to overshadow the Attorney General's press conference with her guided tour through the upturned bedroom. After Donato Dalrymple joined the Gonzalez household, so crowded with hangers-on it resembled the Marx Brothers' stateroom in A Night at the Opera, Marisleysis burnished his image as the heroic fisherman who saved Elian. As it turns out, he's a housecleaner who has been so hungry for the limelight that his cousin, the veteran seaman on the boat, has vowed never to see him again.

By Friday, when chairman Hatch realized that Republicans could inadvertently be creating a new voting bloc--anti-anti-Castro Cuban Americans--he postponed the hearings (forever, perhaps?) and rethought the possible witnesses. But Democrats will surely insist on calling "the Fisherman"--a cross between Kato Kaelin and William Ginsburg. It will be a priceless television moment when Dalrymple tells how he and Marisleysis let Elian lick his face. The Democrats will also relish hearing from the paramilitary group, Alpha 66, and the four guards with concealed-weapons permits who patrolled the encampment.

Waco hearings didn't work, even though 80 people died. Impeachment hearings didn't work, although the President actually had sex with that woman. Trying to show that reuniting a devoted father with his devoted son is a miscarriage of justice because the son had the misfortune to wash up on the shores of a swing state? No wonder Democrats are happy.