Rewriting History Part 13

When it came out that Hillary didn't have the fig leaf of the ethics approval, she had to backtrack and get a real mortgage. On October 14, the Clintons announced that they had taken out a new mortgage loan of $1.35 million for their house without McAuliffe's guarantee.

If the Clintons had gone through with the McAuliffe guarantee, would it have been a gift? Under the terms of the new loan, sans guarantee, the Clintons had to pay 7.5 percent interest. The old loan, with McAuliffe standing behind the Clintons, was for 6.5 percent. The extra one percent interest, on a $1.35 million mortgage, comes to $13,500 per year for the five-year term of the mortgage - a gift of $67,500.

The Clintons' conduct in arranging their Chappaqua home purchase tells us a lot. Eight years of ducking scandal in the White House - and living to tell about it - had apparently made the Clintons so confident about their ability to get away with anything that they hardly gave a second thought to an arrangement that attracted so much criticism that they had to rescind it. And they seemed to be so tone-deaf that they failed even to antic.i.p.ate the criticism.

And for what? For 1 percent? In order to shave their debt service payments by $13,500 per year - when they had $18 million in book deals in the offing - they were willing to risk a public scandal just as Hillary was approaching a Senate race in a state where she'd never lived. There's a word for this sort of att.i.tude: arrogance.

And this arrogance is matched by their growing appet.i.tes. The Clintons I knew in the 1980s and early 1990s would put up with any financial hardship in order to survive and prevail politically. No desire for wealth would ever have stood in the way of their ambition. But here they were risking her political career to buy a great, big expensive home . . . and not even to buy it, but to save a few bucks in paying for it.

A hunger for luxury; an eye for loopholes (real or imagined); a rampant materialism and disregard of ethics rules - are these the principles on which a President Hillary would pad her own nest while presuming to steer the economy and lead our country forward?

THE PARDONS.

But not all the help President Clinton gave Hillary was financial. He also used the power of pardon - supposedly the most nonpolitical power of the office - to help her get elected. In a pardon, one man - the president, who was not present at the trial - overrides the verdict of a jury and the sentencing of a magistrate with the stroke of a pen. It is a power almost uniquely absolute in our democracy, usually so governed by checks and balances.

The key difference between New York politics and those of any other state in America is its balkanization into a dozen or more ethnic voting blocs. As the initial destination for many of America's legal immigrants - and a goodly share of the illegal entrants - New York's ethnic groups are not h.o.m.ogenized. Russians, Poles, Chinese, Koreans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Mexicans, Haitians, and the rest remain fiercely separate, their communities vibrant and distinct.

Most of these const.i.tuencies lean to the Democratic Party anyway, but two - Puerto Ricans and Hasidic Jews - have shown considerable independence. New York's Republican governor, George Pataki, won a surprising share of the Puerto Rican vote in his 2002 bid for a third term. Hasidic Jews, at odds with New York's African American community, have increasingly turned their backs on the Democrats and embraced Republican candidates. Wild cards in the state's ongoing political poker game, these groups are key targets for anyone seeking public office.

Every politician caters to them, as one might expect, with patronage, promises, and plat.i.tudes. But only Hillary and Bill gave them pardons.

The FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional - The Armed Forces of National Liberation) - is the Puerto Rican equivalent of the Irish Republican Army. Determined to end their island's status as a commonwealth affiliated with the United States, they want complete independence. As Barbara Olson wrote, they are "a Marxist group responsible for a reign of terror that included 130 bombing attacks in the United States from 1974 to 1983. Chicago, New York, and Washington were prime . . . targets, with attacks against the New York office of the FBI, military recruiting centers, and the Chicago campaign headquarters of Jimmy Carter. All told, the terrorists racked up six deaths and scores of wounded. The victims included the husband of Diana Berger of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, six months pregnant with her first child when her husband fell victim to an FALN bomb. Joseph and Thomas Connor, nine and eleven, lost their father in the same bomb attack. Other attacks left police officers maimed and blind."

And yet Bill Clinton pardoned them.

After 9/11, it's hard to imagine any president pardoning a terrorist. But back in 1999, it was fashionable - in some liberal circles, anyway - to look with favor on the FALN, in much the same way that those same circles had cheered for the Black Panthers during Hillary's law school days.

New York Puerto Rican Congressman Jose Serrano called these figures political prisoners, and signed an open letter to President Clinton calling for their release. He was joined by former President Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu in urging the clemency.

But for all the hype among New York's liberals, opposition to pardoning the FALN was widespread: - Carlos Romero-Barcelo, Puerto Rico's congressional delegate (who sits in the House of Representatives but cannot vote) came out against the pardons. "These are people who acted in cold blood with the purpose of imposing their will," he said. "These are the worst crimes in a democracy. . . . How can we responsibly set them free? What if they kill somebody else?"

- FBI Director Louis Freeh opposed the pardon.

- The Justice Department sent Clinton a memo in 1996 against the pardons.

- The FBI's a.s.sistant director of national security, Neil Gallagher, denounced the FALN as "criminals, and they are terrorists and they represent a threat to the United States."

But the potential gains for Hillary among New York's Puerto Rican community were too good to pa.s.s up. It was a game the Clintons had played before: The president had already acted to appease the Puerto Rican community by banning the use of live ammunition tests at the Navy Training Base in Vieques, Puerto Rico, long a grievance of the island's residents and emigres. Pardoning the FALN was the next step.

So, in September 1999, Bill Clinton offered pardons to sixteen FALN terrorists. (Because they had not even sought pardons - they saw themselves as political prisoners who did not need to be pardoned - the president could only "offer" the pardons rather than "grant" them. Fourteen accepted his largesse.) When the pardons were announced, Hillary was supportive but said she had "no involvement in or prior knowledge of the decision."

As the New Republic noted, Hillary's statement is "hard to believe." The magazine reported that on "August 9th, two days before the president announced the clemency deal, New York City Councilman Jose Rivera personally presented Hillary with a packet on clemency, including a letter asking her to 'speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive clemency' to the prisoners."

The magazine reported that "Hillary may also have heard something about the issue from clemency advocate Dennis Rivera . . . head of the health-care workers union."

And how could President Clinton not have told his wife about the pardons? Here she was, running for Senate in the state that had the largest Puerto Rican population in the nation. The pardons directly affected how she would be perceived in that community. They were, obviously, controversial. They would have a lasting impact on her candidacy. It is just not credible that he didn't tell her.

Invoking executive privilege, the president refused to release the background doc.u.ments that led to his decision to grant clemency. But the outcry was enormous and instant. Police a.s.sociations, New York newspapers, and her then-opponent, Rudy Giuliani, attacked the pardons and Hillary for supporting them. The Washington Post reported "the backlash against the offer is reported to have caught the White House by surprise." Hillary needed to run for cover. Once more, the Clintons seemed to have had no clue that releasing convicted terrorists who had not even requested it might cause a problem.

Because her husband had actually only "offered" clemency to the terrorists, they had to accept or reject his proffer. After three weeks, many of the terrorists had not yet accepted the clemency and its precondition that they pledge to abstain from violence. Hillary seized on their response to reverse her position and oppose Bill's action, saying "It's been three weeks and their silence speaks volumes." In the end, then, Hillary got to have it both ways: supporting clemency when it appeared beneficial, running away when it started to look costly.

Joseph Connor, whose father fell victim to the FALN, summarizes the pardons eloquently: "The Clinton family traded the release of terrorists for votes; votes that were promised to be delivered by New York politicians to Hillary for senate and Gore for president. That was clear."

Of course, that was not Clinton's only problematic pardon. The most controversial went to Mark Rich, a fugitive who fled the United States, renounced his American citizenship, and settled in Switzerland to avoid answering federal fraud charges. National anger over pardoning a man who wouldn't appear in court and was no longer even an American citizen - and still won't come back to the United States as of this writing - was long and loud.

Rich's estranged wife, songwriter and Clinton supporter Denise Rich, fought hard for the pardon, and distributed her financial largesse far and wide to win favorable consideration. Among her donations to Clinton-related funds was $450,000 to the Clinton Library, $10,000 to the Clintons' legal defense fund, $70,000 to the Hillary Clinton campaign or committees that supported her campaign, as well as a gift of $7,000 worth of furniture to the Clintons. Rich also gave $1 million to the Democratic Party and other Democratic candidates.

If the FALN pardons were intended to help Hillary with Hispanic voters, the pardon of the leaders of the New Square Community in Rockland County, New York, helped with Hasidic voters among New York's Orthodox Jewish Community.

The four New Square leaders had applied for and received federal scholarships for 1,500 phantom students at the religious school they ran, pocketing $40 million of taxpayer money. Sentenced to prison terms in 1999 of between two and a half and six and a half years, the community began to press for pardons.

In August 2000, while campaigning for the Senate, Hillary visited New Square and met with Rabbi David Twersky, a community leader. Her visit was most successful. In November 2000, while other Hasidic districts voted overwhelmingly for Hillary's opponent, New Square backed her by 1,400 votes to only twelve.

On December 22, 2000, with a month left in his presidency, Clinton met with the leaders of New Square at the White House about a pardon for their leaders. Hillary was present, but contends that she did not speak at the meeting. Evidently she didn't have to; all four New Square leaders received presidential pardons.

The FALN and New Square pardons go beyond the tackiness of inviting donors to sleep in the White House or at Camp David, or the questionable ethics of inviting them to taxpayer funded White House dinners. These pardons freed terrorists and swindlers from prison.

One thing that can be said with certainty about a second Clinton presidency is that the power of pardons will remain just as powerful, and as tempting, to President Hillary as it was to President Bill.

MANAGING THE MEDIA.

During her Senate campaign, Hillary was still able to use her status as first lady to blunt media questions as her campaign unfolded. Members of the Secret Service kept reporters at bay, citing security concerns, and the first lady turned down interviews with reporters she considered hostile.

Fred d.i.c.ker, the New York Post's Albany bureau chief, described how it worked: "She'll show up at a local event and you'll go up to her like you would any candidate and say 'Mrs. Clinton, can I ask you . . .' and she runs off and the Secret Service blocks us. She's done that time after time after time. You can't get to her. She's using the resources of the federal government to prevent us from just having the kind of access you would take for granted with any other politician."

Sometimes, the Secret Service agents even used force to keep the press away from Hillary. As Metro Network newsman Glenn Schuck recounted, at one rally "Secret Service agents literally [were] pushing press to the ground. ... I mean they just started pushing and shoving; female camera people five feet tall were getting thrown to the ground, cameras flying. Myself, I was grabbed by the shoulder, thrown back over. I think somebody from Channel 11 landed on my back."

Most candidates could not get away with this policy of distancing the media, but Hillary used her special status as first lady to make it work.

To work for her, anyway. Politicians always prefer to control their ostensibly spontaneous appearances in front of voters, and Hillary is no exception. The most extreme example came when she appeared on Late Show with David Letterman. In Living History, Hillary says that because "late-night comics sometimes skewer their guests. ... I was a little nervous."

She needn't have been (and she probably wasn't); after all, everything had been scripted out in advance. The highlight of the Letterman show was a quiz he gave her about New York State to test her local knowledge. She answered all the questions correctly. But the New York Daily News revealed that her staff, taking a page from the fixed television quiz shows of the 1950s, had been given the questions in advance. Like Mark Van Doren, the legendary cheat from the original quiz show scandals, Hillary would pretend to search her memory as Letterman asked each question, seeming to stall for time, and then blurt out the answer at the last moment - always correct. The tension mounted as Dave asked each of the ten questions in turn - but Hillary aced the test.

GIULIANI WITHDRAWS.

I do not believe Hillary could have defeated her original opponent for the Senate, Rudy Giuliani. Even before his canonization after the crisis of 9/11, his popularity downstate would have made Hillary's task truly daunting. To win in New York State, a Democrat must come out of New York City with a huge margin in order to offset the enormous Republican base in the suburbs; Giuliani would have run too strongly in New York City and the suburbs for Hillary to win.

But Giuliani turned out to have two problems: prostate cancer and a bad marriage. Hillary could not have known of the former when she announced for the Senate, but the odds are that she knew about the latter. Rudy had been conducting a blatant affair with Judith Nathan, spurning his wife, Donna Hanover. It was an open secret; the entire New York press corps talked about it all the time. Hillary hardly needed her private detective to have known about Nathan.

Would the affair, by itself, have knocked Giuliani out of the Senate race? Perhaps not, but in combination with a sense of his own mortality, and the need to focus on people he truly loved, it was apparently enough to persuade him to pull out. In any event, by withdrawing from the contest Rudy virtually handed the Senate seat to Hillary.

Rick Lazio, Hillary's new opponent, was actually forty-two years old, but looked like he was twenty-five. A center-right congressman from New York's suburbs, he was a virtual unknown. Moreover, because of Giuliani's late departure from the field, Lazio had very little time to build a campaign. Before he could define himself to the voters, Hillary was all over him with negative ads painting him as a right-wing extremist, despite his pro-choice, pro-environmental voting record.

Adding to his circ.u.mstantial handicaps, Lazio soon exhibited a tactical deficiency as well. He was determined to play to the grandstands - the legion of Hillary haters - by running negative advertis.e.m.e.nts emphasizing what everyone knew already: that she was not a New Yorker. Instead of publicizing his own record, Lazio spent all of his time and money attacking her. Negative ads work when they convey new and important information. But negative ads that just restate the obvious don't work. Everyone who would ever vote against Hillary because she wasn't a New Yorker was already voting against her. The ads could do nothing to augment their ranks. Lazio learned too late that the Battle of Hillary was over and the Battle of Lazio had begun.

Many candidates, particularly Republicans, are so enamored of negative ads that they forget to run positive commercials that explain to voters what they are all about. As in baseball, where a fastball is still the best pitch, positive ads remain the most effective weapon in politics. Too bad Lazio didn't choose to run them.

What he chose, instead, was to make an issue of "soft money" - contributions above the legally allowable amount that can be donated to an individual candidate, that are given to parties for issue advertising. Soft money, in short, represented a way to circ.u.mvent the legal limit of $1,000 per person per candidate contributions to Senate elections.

Because the Republicans have historically counted on people who can afford to write checks substantially greater than $1,000, they have, in general, opposed limits on soft money. It wasn't surprising, therefore, when Hillary opened the campaign by appealing for an end to soft money donations, reflexively echoing the scripted position of the Democratic Party.

That's when reality departed from the script. Lazio found that anti-Hillary donors flooded his campaign with small contributions through the mail and e-mail, and he quickly decided to agree to ban the larger soft money donations. But Hillary, despite her stated opposition to it, needed soft money. Her donors were special interest types, who wanted to curry favor with the president.

So Hillary was on the spot. She had called for an end to soft money, but she was bluffing, and had never expected to have her bluff called. Two months before election day, Lazio had $10 million in hard money on hand; Hillary had only $7 million. So when Lazio agreed to ban soft money, she didn't know what to do. Suddenly in love with soft money, she conceded that a ban would work against her. It was typical Hillary: There was no objective issue, no fair judgment of ethics or circ.u.mstances. There were only measures that would favor the forces of goodness (her) and those that would do the opposite.

But banning soft money had been Hillary's issue. It was she who had first injected it into the Senate race, and it was highly embarra.s.sing that she could not take Lazio's "yes" for an answer and agree not to spend soft money. That is, it would have been embarra.s.sing for most people. In Living History Hillary notes, disingenuously: "I wasn't going to commit to it [the soft money ban] unilaterally."

There's only one problem with Hillary's story: Lazio had already agreed to cease spending soft money. There was never any question of a "unilateral" ban on these funds.

The issue erupted during their debate on September 15, 2000. Lazio, pen in hand, strode over to Hillary's lectern, hectoring her and demanding that she sign the soft money ban right then and there. "Right here, sign it right now!" Lazio said.

Young and inexperienced, Lazio had overplayed his hand. With so many anti-Hillary zealots, it was hard to focus on the sensitivities of swing voters - a lesson for anyone who runs against Hillary in the future.

The pressure on Hillary to accept the ban on soft money built up. Succ.u.mbing, she agreed to the ban on September 24, 2000. Lazio hailed the agreement as a victory, but for him it was actually a big defeat: One of his core issues went away, and Hillary had plenty of success raising enough hard money to compete with Lazio. All that remained in most voters' minds was the image of a menacing Lazio striding over to Hillary's lectern - a move that backfired just as it did for Al Gore in his third presidential debate with George W. Bush the same year.

Ultimately, it was a last-minute event and its aftermath that sealed Hillary's victory. On October 12, 2000 - less than a month before the election - al Qaeda terrorists attacked the USS Cole in Yemen, killing seventeen American sailors. Hillary cancelled her New York events to go to the memorial service. Nothing, of course, could have been more of a campaign event - as Hillary's every move was broadcast live into the most heavily Jewish state in the nation.

And as if that wasn't bad enough for Lazio, he decided to make it a disaster.

Hillary had accepted a campaign contribution from the American Muslim Alliance, a group that some said had links to terrorists (a charge the group vehemently denied). In a "clerical error" on her disclosure forms, the organization was listed as the "American Museum Alliance." Amazing what a difference a few letters can make.

Cynics called it a deliberate misrepresentation. But Lazio was way too aggressive once more. He set up phone banks to call Jewish voters, attacking Hillary for accepting the donation. He linked it to the Cole attack, urging voters to tell Hillary to stop backing terrorist groups.

The charge went way too far. Many candidates think that campaign phone messages fall under the radar and won't be noticed by the establishment press. But not in New York. Lazio's phoners admitted to the calls, and the story blew up. The fact that she shouldn't have taken a donation from such a group was lost in the melee. In its place, Hillary's opponent had handed her a golden opportunity with his implication that Hillary actually "supported" terrorism.

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, beloved of the city's Jewish voters, reb.u.t.ted Lazio's charges in a television ad that undoubtedly reached many more people than had gotten the phone calls. "Rick, stop with the sleaze already," Koch said.

WHY HILLARY WON: THE DEMOGRAPHICS.

However damaging Lazio's missteps were, though, the real reason for Hillary's victory lay in those demographic insights buried in the 2000 census statistics. New York State, it turned out, had undergone a dramatic population change in the decade from 1990 to 2000. The state had lost half a million people to other states - but it had absorbed an equal number of foreign immigrants. And while those who left were largely older, white Republicans, the immigrants who arrived were Democrats.

Combined, these population shifts had transformed New York from a swing state to a solidly Democratic one. Two years before Hillary won, Democratic Congressman Chuck Schumer had defeated eighteen-year Republican inc.u.mbent Alfonse D'Amato. With Hillary's victory in 2000, New York had two Democrats in the Senate for the first time in fifty years. New York's Republican Governor George Pataki held on to office only by moving so far to the left that the GOP had a hard time recognizing him.

Hillary picked up on these demographic trends - which, remember, she would have seen and studied before the public or the Republicans had a chance - and exploited them brilliantly. I always wondered how she managed such a convincing victory. When the census came out, I understood.

... AND AS SENATOR?.

As soon as Hillary took office, of course, she was engulfed with a thorough deluge of scandal, stemming from the orgy of White House gift-giving (and taking), her husbands' pardon-granting, and her book deal.

But then things quieted down. She settled into the job of Senator, and brought a calmness to her role that few had antic.i.p.ated. Even as Washington braced for her arrival, she fooled her detractors by blending in and avoiding controversy.

But she also didn't get much done. At this writing, more than three years into her term, she still has yet to pa.s.s a single piece of legislation. She has carved out no area of expertise, and many believe she has yet to make her impact felt in any but a symbolic fashion.

Indeed, her only sustained and vigorous activity has been campaign fund-raising - at which she excels - and the promotion of her book.

The Senate has cast two key votes during her short time in office. On one, the Iraq War, she voted with Bush and the moderates to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. On the other, to expand Medicare to include prescription drugs for the elderly, she voted with the doctrinaire liberals of her own party against the Bush plan. So one vote was centrist and the other leftist.

Some of her votes were motivated by neither leftist ideology nor centrist compromise, but by a desire for personal revenge. As noted, she twice voted against the confirmation of Michael Chertoff for judicial nominations to punish him for his role in the Whitewater investigation. She also opposed Ted Olson's confirmation as solicitor general, presumably to protest his late wife Barbara's role as chief of the staff of the Government Reform Committee that had haunted her and her husband over the FBI file and White House gifts scandals. (Barbara's authorship of two Hillary-bashing books couldn't have helped, either.) Her one faux pas was to stand up in the Senate and scream that she demanded to know "what Bush knew and when he knew it" about 9/11. Her strident remarks were roundly condemned, and she was quickly chastened into silence.

Hillary visited Iraq in 2003, one step behind President Bush's surprise Thanksgiving visit to the troops. While she was there, she criticized the war, earning the condemnation of the right and the applause of the left.

But the overwhelming impression of Mrs. Clinton's Senate career has been one of mediocrity. Shying away from controversy, avoiding the spotlight, she has done precious little to justify the high hopes with which she was elected.

What she has mainly achieved in the Senate is the recovery of her public image. As each new month pa.s.ses without a debilitating battle, the flaming red anger of Hillary's White House years has been replaced with a benign glow, suggesting - if not quite proving - a newfound maturity.

But the simple act of maintaining equilibrium in the Senate pales next to the real achievement of Hillary's new career - which was getting elected in the first place. With all her White House privileges and demographic advantages, with all her early gaffes and ill-judged favors, before long she righted herself, stopped making mistakes, and waged a skillful campaign. When her opponent's negative ads gave her an opening, she pounced on it wisely and well, sealing a lead she never lost.

If the first task of a president is to be a good politician, Hillary demonstrated her ability in this first outing. Drawing on her experiences as both a manager and an advocate, she managed to get her message across, and out-perform her Republican rival.

And so concluded the first act of HILLARY: The Drama - with its heroine riding high. Will the rest of the production be remembered as a triumph? A farce? Or a tragedy?

THE PERFECT STORM.

At this writing, a confluence of political circ.u.mstances and trends is propelling Hillary Clinton toward the presidency - a political perfect storm where all of the forces needed to win seem to be aligning in her favor: - The public relations triumph of her book and promotional tour.

- A safe perch in the Senate, where the wounds of Whitewater and the other Clinton scandals are healing - and our memories are fading.

- The dearth of other potential Democratic rivals: After John Kerry, who is left?

- On the Republican side, no heir apparent (always excepting yet another Bush).

- The dramatically and rapidly changing demographics of the United States, with our growing minority population.

All these are moving Hillary Clinton into the on-deck circle.

Last summer's brilliantly orchestrated marketing campaign for Living History improved Hillary's image, and raised her approval ratings to new heights. Through her autobiography, however distorted, Hillary defined herself, evoking sympathy and admiration. Her descriptions of her family and career, of the pain and losses she has suffered, made her appear more human, more vulnerable, and less frightening, particularly to other women. By crossing the country on her book tour, she reached out to tens of thousands of people who swarmed her signings and saw her as a star. The reviews may have been negative, but her appearance with Barbara Walters was such an example of softball journalism that it could have been a paid political advertis.e.m.e.nt. Sure that she'd receive few direct challenges to the story as she presented it in her book, Hillary was able to be positive and cheerful, smiling and happy. She was the All-New HILLARY.

At the same time, she gloried in her role as a senator. With the days of the special prosecutor behind her, the complaints about her credibility and character had dwindled. Her work as a senator was of less interest to the national press, which allowed her to restrict her public visibility and stay on message. No longer on the defensive - no longer obliged to spend her days hiding billing records or denying accusations - Hillary's popularity rose as her past scandals faded. Her handlers spent their days placing stories describing her quiet effectiveness and newfound popularity on Capitol Hill: Hillary as Miss Congeniality.

And the other Democratic contenders seemed to die on the vine. Howard Dean met with a debacle and self-destructed. Joe Lieberman faltered at takeoff. Wesley Clark started with much promise, but never fulfilled it. d.i.c.k Gephardt died a much-deserved, and hopefully final, political death. John Edwards flared briefly into prominence, but seemed to lack staying power. John Kerry won the nomination, but it was a mixed blessing indeed: Even before securing the necessary delegates, he ran into a buzz-saw of Bush negative advertising. With John Kerry as the one potential exception, Hillary was suddenly rid of all of her potential compet.i.tors for the future presidential nomination.

There was similar bad news and disarray on the Republican side. Perhaps the most ominous development for the GOP was the inexorable demographic shift that is remaking America. Every year, America becomes half a percent more black and Hispanic. Today, these two groups each account for 12 percent of the American population. The United States Census Bureau estimates that in twenty years blacks will comprise 14 percent of the population, Latinos 19 percent. So the combined black and Hispanic community, which now represents one quarter of the American population, will grow to one third by 2025. And 75 percent of Hispanic Americans live in five important states: California, New York, Illinois, Texas, and Florida. Florida - the ultimate swing state, on which the 2000 election hinged - is now 30.4 percent black and Hispanic. Texas, no longer a safe Republican stronghold, is 43.5 percent minority. California, once a swing state and now increasingly a Democratic bastion, is 39.1 percent black and Hispanic.

In 1996, while I was working for President Clinton, I calculated that in a 50-50 race for president the swing state was New Jersey. By the 2000 election, New Jersey was solidly Democratic; Florida, a state that historically leaned Republican, was the new bellwether.

Since the 2000 election, with its 543,895 popular vote margin for Gore, America has become 2 percent more black and Hispanic. This demographic transformation forces Bush to do better than he did in 2000 just to stay even, like a person running up a down escalator. If African Americans continue to vote for Democratic candidates by 8:1, and Latinos follow past habits and back them by 3:1, Republicans will find it harder than ever to defeat the Democratic nominee - particularly if she's Hillary. Add her strong showing among single white women to immense popularity among minorities, and the GOP would have to win the remaining voters by more than 2:1 in order to succeed. The Republican Party is running out of white people.

This shift in Democratic state-by-state strength is due not merely to increasing numbers of African Americans, but to their greater animosity toward the GOP. Until Ronald Reagan, African Americans didn't hate the Republican Party. Eisenhower carried black voters because they distrusted the Democratic Party, memorably represented by an aging generation of racist southern politicians. In 1959, when a crucial amendment came up to ban all-white jury trials for civil rights cases, Senator John F. Kennedy voted with the South and Vice President Richard Nixon broke the ensuing tie in favor of the liberals. How times have changed!

As late as 1972, Richard Nixon won a large slice of the African American vote. As the Republican Party abandoned its forward-thinking support for civil rights to embrace the cynical Southern Strategy, African American voters were increasingly turned off. When Reagan sliced discretionary federal spending and demolished many anti-poverty programs left over from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, blacks turned solidly against the GOP. In the Reagan landslide of 1984, blacks bloc-voted for the loser even as whites were re-electing Reagan by a landslide. And no Republican has won a significant share of the African American vote in any national election since.

Likewise, the Republican Party systematically alienated Hispanics throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by advocating English-only language laws, deriding bilingual education, castigating affirmative action, opposing social benefits for legal immigrants, and demanding that the children of illegal aliens be denied public education. In Florida and California, anti-Hispanic proposals regularly roiled state politics, driving Latinos into the waiting arms of the Democrats.

Yet the Hispanic American vote should be fertile territory for the Republican Party. Overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, Latinos are generally social conservatives. Surveys show that they are largely pro-life and deeply committed to Republican notions of the nuclear family and traditional values. (A CBS-New York Times survey in 2003 showed that 44 percent of Hispanics said that abortion should not be permitted; only 33 percent felt it should be legal.) It was only the aggressive rhetoric of latter-day nativists like Pat Buchanan that turned them into Democrats.

More recently, President Bush and his brother in Florida have pushed the Republican Party to adopt more Latino-friendly policies. Forcing the party to abandon anti-immigrant, English-only campaigns, the president courageously urged a program to legalize Latino workers in the United States, increase immigration, and, in effect, grant amnesty to those already in the country, even if they had arrived illegally.

It's too early to tell whether Bush's outreach will bear fruit, but the strategy is vital to his re-election. Republican victories in must-win states like Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, and Florida may well hinge on attracting the Latino vote. And if Bush fails to blunt their bloc-voting for Democrats, by 2008 America will have become so Hispanic and African American that their votes may make the Democratic nominee almost impossible to beat.