Campaign 2000: 'Me llamo Jorge W.' - The governor and bilingual ed.

Following George W. Bush's recent encouraging speeches on missile defense and Social Security reform, a wave of optimism and amnesia has swept over the Right. Not only will the November election now offer a significant pros pect for conservative reform, argue pundits as various as Ramesh Ponnuru and Grover Norquist, but apparently the Texas governor always was the Great White Hope of movement conservatism.

A few stubborn issues, however, intrude on this pleasing work of the imagination. Until now, the main ground of conservative disquiet has been racial preferences-on which Mr. Bush's careful evasiveness is neatly symbolized by his appointments with Ward Connerly that never become actual meetings. But the remarkable success of Proposition 227 in California presents him with another difficulty in the form of Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley millionaire who crafted the anti-bilingual 227 and who now campaigns for the GOP to oppose bilingual education nationally.

Mr. Bush had plainly hoped to keep such controversy at bay with a set of useful phrases. He has repeatedly told audiences like the convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) that he supports bilingual programs "that work," that he rejects "English only" programs as divisive, and that he opposes Proposition 227, which replaced traditional bilingual programs with English immersion, on the same grounds.

This is certainly bilingual in that it consists entirely of doubletalk. Everyone would support bilingual programs that worked, but as the Bush campaign must know, those we actually have are manifest failures. Standardized tests in California, conducted in 1998 prior to the passage of 227, showed that students in bilingual-education programs were unable to write or speak more than a few words of English after years of instruction. Similarly, to describe the campaign for official English as "only me without taking into account others," as Mr. Bush did before the Latin Business Assoc iation, is both ethnic pandering and the exact opposite of the truth. The motive behind such programs is not to divide Americans-isolating people in linguistic enclaves does that-but to ensure that all Americans enjoy the benefits of a common language and common culture, including economic opportunity, social inclusiveness, and national unity. And to claim that your "fundamental goal is proficiency in English" while opposing the one available measure designed to realize that goal, namely Proposition 227, is like supporting "fair housing" while opposing fair-housing laws, as John Leo has pointed out (though in a different context) in his indispensable U.S. News & World Report column. Mr. Bush would never be allowed to get away with such sleight of words if the mainstream media were not less sympathetic to the opponents of bilingualism than they are even to the Republican party.

He may not be able to get away with it in any case. The Bush campaign crafted its bilingualism strategy before the passage of Proposition 227, which, at the time, was opposed by almost every establishment figure in California and so looked headed for defeat. Not only did it pass by almost a two-thirds majority, it has actually been implemented in most of California-and the early results are staggeringly good. By the end of the first post-227 school year, immigrant second-graders in those schools in compliance with Prop. 227 were reading at the 35th percentile, compared with the 19th percentile for those stuck in schools that were still bilingual. These results have naturally influenced the wider political debate. Opinion polls in California now show 227 to be even more popular today than when it passed, notably among Latino parents. In anticipation of a legal rebuff, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) withdrew all but one of its constitutional objections to 227 in the last week of May. And voter initiatives based on 227 are expected to be on the November ballot in Arizona and Colorado.

Like Ward Connerly's anti-preference Prop. 209, Ron Unz's Prop. 227 is spreading like kudzu across America-to the potential embarrassment of George W. Bush. Even so, the Republican's desire to finesse bilingualism is superficially understandable. Although it is the conventional wisdom that Mr. Bush will be a hit with Hispanic voters, he is well aware that this may not be so. His share of the Hispanic vote in his 1998 gubernatorial election was a mere 41 percent-a landslide in reverse-and according to exit polls, Al Gore beat him by more than 2-to-1 among Latino voters in this March's California primary. In addition, the Bush campaign has the benefit of Ron Unz's bitter experience in the 1998 battle for 227. For several months prior to the vote, Mr. Unz had argued that 227-unlike Proposition 187, restricting non-emergency social benefits to illegal immigrants-would enjoy majority support among Latino voters. The opinion polls seemed to support him; most Hispanic parents probably did want the English immersion that meant a better economic future for their children; and the Wall Street Journal editorial page even announced after the vote that most Latinos had voted for 227. Sadly, that was not so. Exactly as in the 187 campaign, ethnic pressure groups like LULAC and MALDEF succeeded in making opposition to 227 a test of ethnic loyalty even for those voters who approved of it as an educational reform. In the event, 227 passed with a two-thirds majority among white voters and lost by about the same percentage among Hispanic voters. Gov. Bush wants to avoid any such provocations to LULAC and MALDEF between now and November lest they stir up Hispanic voters against him.

If this caution is understandable, it is also mistaken. Even when opposition to 227 was made a test of ethnic loyalty, an impressive 37 percent of Latino voters still voted for it. That is the Republican base among Latino voters. It is not augmented but reduced by ethnic appeals that influence mainly those Hispanics who are natural Democrats; Latinos who lean to the GOP are more likely to respond to assimilationist arguments such as 227. After all, if I may quote myself here: "short of enlisting, voting Republican is just about the ultimate expression of assimilation." Not surprisingly, therefore, as Mr. Unz has pointed out, this Latino Republican base stayed home in 1998 when Dan Lungren and the California GOP ran a campaign that avoided any "divisive" issues such as immigration, bilingualism, or multiculturalism and made directly ethnic appeals to the Hispanic electorate. Even though the GOP ticket was ethnically balanced, it scored between the high teens and low twenties among Latino voters and lost in the entire electorate by almost 20 points. Yet despite the current mythology among California Republicans, this Latino base turned out in 1994 to help give landslide victories to Gov. Pete Wilson and 187 in numbers only slightly lower than those supporting 227.

The best GOP strategy for maximizing Hispanic support, therefore, is to make a strong principled case for English immersion and other assimilationist policies. What makes that strategy more generally appealing is that these appeals also arouse the Republican base among white and African-American voters-and might even win back the Reagan Democrats, since a 1998 Zogby poll showed that 84 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of Democrats strongly support English immersion. Bush's present ambiguity, by contrast, leaves voters interested in these issues cold and despairing, pleasing only the liberal ethnic pressure groups that will always support the Democrats in the end.

Finally, whatever its electoral drawbacks or advantages, bilingual education must also be judged from the standpoint of wise public policy. As Steve Sailer recently pointed out, "Before age 13 a child's mind possesses a remarkable ability to learn new languages. He can absorb new vocabularies, grammars, and accents simply through osmosis as long as he's immersed in the language. But at puberty, the mind's language-learning faculty grows rigid, and the hope of ever losing a foreign accent fades out . . . In an Internet-driven 21st century, where English is the global passport to economic success, denying American children the chance to fully learn English is unspeakable."

Not that I want to sound naive, of course, but that should surely count for something.