Administration Job Line Forms on the Right: Latinos, Take a Number : Clinton: If the President-elect does the right thing, he will practice presidential affirmative action. But will the right Chicanos be picked?

Wanted: Disciples of Change. Exceptionally well-qualified Mexican-Americans to serve in new Democratic administration. Youth is a plus, consistent with management. Distinguished resumes need only apply. Spanish optional. Ivy League preferred.

As they say, to the victor goes the spoils. And, to the victor’s supporters go the favors. Given the inference of inclusion that traditionally follows Democrats to power, will Bill Clinton practice presidential affirmative action?

After deficit, diversity was the word I heard candidate Clinton mention least in 12 months on the stump. Oh yeah, once on “Donahue,” he was asked about affirmative action by a white male in a college sweatshirt. He carefully recited a sound-bite assurance that he was in favor of affirmative action, but against quotas, an answer George Bush would second.

Last week, 60 of the most powerful and influential Mexican-Americans in the country gathered for a closed-door meeting in Dallas. There was former Denver Mayor Federico Pena; Andy Hernandez of the Southwest Voter Registration Project; Texas Atty. Gen. Dan Morales, and Californians Antonia Hernandez, of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina. They were worried about being forgotten, lost in the celebration as their constituents were lost in the campaign. On their wish list: a respectable number of 3,000 high-level positions and, more than that, 300 higher-level jobs in a Clinton Administration. They will keep the pressure subtle, but constant.

Unfortunately, though, the expected Latino tide will most likely turn out to be a ripple. The crema , like former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, will be skimmed, of course. But on a lower rung, gray-haired Latino politicos , left over from Great Society days, will be disappointed at the absence of anything shiny in their political tin pan.

Three reasons. The “money people,” which leaves out most Latinos, go to the head of the line. Friends of Bill and Hillary and Al Gore, which leaves out most Latinos, are also up at the front. Finally, many of the voters who went Democratic this time are already notoriously suspicious and resentful of affirmative action. They will not react kindly to conspicuous racial giveaways--moreover, economically wounded Americans might consider them takeaways.

There is another, more practical reason. The 12-year Democratic drought at the top has dried up the federal pipeline of Latinos who might normally flow into Washington jobs. The Dallas group, for example, was top-heavy with officials from state and local government and private advocacy groups. By hitching their political trailers almost exclusively to Democrats in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Mexican-American politicos mostly sat out the Reagan Revolution. Jimmy Carter-era activists, many of whom had been first inspired by John F. Kennedy’s call to public service, returned home to the Southwest.

Strangely, these political grandfathers have no political offspring; a whole generation is missing. With a baby boomer in the White House, there are few politically viable Latino baby boomers to join him there. Instead, there are grandchildren who, educated at the best schools and holders of the best connections, may find themselves on the short lists of future Democratic administrations. Among them are Xavier Becerra, a Stanford graduate and freshly elected to Congress from the 30th District, and Fidel Vargas, a Harvard graduate and the 23-year-old mayor of Baldwin Park.

Cynically, these young Latinos who are best positioned to benefit from a government job in the Clinton Administration are no strangers to prestige. In the 1980s, the bars in Georgetown filled up with high-powered college interns, who drank themselves silly with imagined power. Meanwhile, talented Latino and African-American college students, sensing an unfriendly environment in Washington, flew home to take jobs in state and local government.

Typical to an unfortunate American tradition of feeding the well-fed, Ivy League Chicanos usually have no shortage of job offers. That tradition is likely to flourish under the new Administration. Clinton is something of a JFK fanatic. He will likely use his appointive power to create a new Camelot. Resumes floating into the White House will be top-heavy with references to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Oxford.

But those schools are as white as linen. So what about diversity? Find me a Harvard Chicano, quick! A friend speculates that a Chicano Rhodes scholar can “write his own ticket” in Little Rock.

The only downside is that by their association with the Ivy League, these Latinos are sorrowfully out of touch with the realities of the experience they pretend to represent to the boss. They do not live in East Los Angeles, South Phoenix or West Fresno. They did not drop out of high school after making their girlfriend pregnant. They did not gang-bang. They did not do drugs.

The Administration should do the right--and the smart--thing and dig deeper into the ranks of state college graduates who perhaps have not argued politics with Kennedys but who have lived the lives that we are all interested in improving. Would you ask a Chicano from Yale how to improve an education system that has served him well?

Still, for a Democratic Party flush with victory to ignore its racial obligations is for it to ignore what Republicans did for 12 years--horribly divide this country along racial lines. The results are staggering. In 1990, a survey of 18- to 24-year-olds, generally an idealistic bunch, found that more than 50% of them considered race relations in the United States to be worsening at an alarming rate. The Reagan-Bush racial legacy is an open wound that must be treated immediately. Clinton should treat it by giving Latinos a sense of possibility.