Messy, but It Works

Ah, the ease of dictatorship. Elian Gonzalez? Send him home, or make him stay. Whatever the kingpin says. Chuck Quackenbush? As Times columnist George Skelton reminded us last week, under another form of government Quackenbush might just have been taken out and shot by a mob. Or maybe made top deputy to the dictator.

What about the agony of Bill Foster of Willowbrook, the man who turned in his son to police, who as a result found the body of a toddler encased in concrete in the trunk of a car? In a land of smoked-window vigilante squads, the decision to stay silent is easy: No father could stand to condemn a son to a certain roadside execution. Here, despite the occasional failings of police, it’s a hard moral choice.

This is the United States, where democracy is a mess. Jostling television vans in a Miami neighborhood create celebrities of people using a sad little Cuban boy to make political hay. Courts take forever to decide whether the father can take the boy back to Cuba, and the justice system waffles about when and how and if Elian should be removed from a Miami house and handed to the father.

In California, the press accuses the insurance commissioner, who lashes back that it’s a media crucifixion and a political ambush. The weight of his wrongdoing--made public by a conscience-stricken public servant and some annoyingly persistent reporters--does push him from the job, yet it may take years to decide all the civil and possibly criminal issues. The lawyer who leaked Insurance Commission documents may gain the public’s gratitude and a permanent crimp in her career, too often the fate of whistle-blowers.

As for Bill Foster, it’s hard to imagine what this obviously loving father went through before calling the police about the little girl, the son’s girlfriend’s daughter, who had disappeared from view. Agonized and weary, Foster worried out loud the day after the arrest about his son going to jail.

But Foster’s son won’t join the ranks of the disappeared, no matter what is determined about the death of the child. The courts did finally send Elian home, and the disorderly process that got him there sparked a healthy, fresh debate about the U.S. relationship with Cuba. Chuck Quackenbush’s errors won’t be repeated soon, people who were wronged after the Northridge quake might get a fuller measure of justice and if things go really right, whistle-blower Cindy Ossias will end up well protected in a great job.

Happy birthday, America. Make as big a mess as needed.