Now that the fast-shuffle 1990 census is complete, you can prepare to watch the man in charge-Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher-move on to his next assignment.
The magician who made millions of Americans disappear last week will soon ankle over to a high-ranking post in President Bush`s re-election campaign. He will leave having conjured up a gift for his friend and fellow transplanted Texan.
Last week, Mosbacher endorsed a flawed census, declining to correct what all concerned acknowledged was a shortfall of more than 5 million Americans.
Most of those citizens live in big cities, and a disproportionate number of them are black, Hispanic and Asian-American.
The folks left out are most likely to be Democrats, and to be represented by Democrats.
It is a melancholy legacy for the census.
After the better part of two years and a nationwide ad campaign fueled by a thousand flag-waving commercials, the administration has opted to do the wrong thing.
In so doing, the administration puts the squeeze on urban Americans who will now be under-represented in Congress, in state legi-slatures and, perhaps most important, when federal dollars are dispensed.
Barbara Bryant, the U.S. Census director, must have thought the deal was on the square when she suggested that Mosbacher was wrong to cling to the discredited figures.
Boston Mayor Ray Flynn had it about right.
”The message to the American people is the poor don`t count,” Flynn said last week, ”so don`t count the poor.”
Naturally, Republicans from Mosbacher on down deny any sneaky doing of the reprehensible with regard to the count. And the man from Commerce said he didn`t consult with the White House before making his decision.
Mosbacher acknowledged that the adjusted figures would have been more accurate for most states and for large urban areas, but he insisted they would be less accurate in smaller locales.
Then, demonstrating the sort of 10-gallon arrogance that seems to accrue to Texas millionaires come to Washington, Mosbacher upended logic with this appraisal.
”I am deeply concerned,” he said, ” . . . that the adjustment would open the door to political tampering with the census in the future.”
From all appearances, Mosbacher`s gang didn`t tamper with the census. Having come up short at an admittedly arduous task, they cooked the books, shuffled city-dwellers out of millions of dollars to which they were entitled and put the government`s stamp of approval on the whole charade.
Remember those dewy-eyed TV commercials aimed at minority citizens, the ones that spoke in hushed tones about the importance of minority communities making themselves heard?
Well, the message from Mosbacher is that maybe participating in the process doesn`t count for much after all. The census broke faith with the citizenry, and with those most vulnerable to its politicization.
Perhaps that should be expected from an administration that spends its political capital worrying about the plight of boat owners and rising luxury taxes.
Indeed, it`s all of a piece with Republican political strategy in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mosbacher`s statistical contempt for the cities is perfectly representative of his party`s Sun Belt, suburban approach.
Cities, particularly the old cities of the Northeast and Midwest, represent problems, intractable and sometimes ugly problems.
Violent crime and decaying schools, AIDS and the homeless, eroding tax bases and crumbling roads and bridges; these are urban travails and, Bush has determined, Democratic problems.
The president, you`ll notice, fawns over state governors but keeps his distance from mayors.
After all, it was Republican governors like John Sununu of New Hampshire, Carroll Campbell of South Carolina and James Thompson of Illinois who stopped the political bleeding for Bush when many in the GOP felt the party might do better with another successor to Ronald Reagan.
Big-city mayors, on the other hand, tend to be Democrats. Worse, they respond badly to the pious humbuggery that emanantes from the White House on domestic policy.
Last month, Bush was cavorting around California while the nation`s mayors were meeting in San Diego.
It might have occurred to the education president to talk to the chief executives of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but it would have cut into the presidential search for the wily bonefish.
George Bush walked away from the cities a long time ago. The 1990 census simply drives home the point.
