Put up or shut up

There were fireworks at the White House state dinner honoring Mexican President Vicente Fox. And they came before dusk.

Americans should, by now, have gotten the message that there is a new Mexico – and it's not that state to the west of Texas. No longer will Mexicans defer to the United States, handing over whatever its neighbor desires (oil, minerals, California) and asking for little in return. Emboldened by the confidence that comes from knowing that its government was democratically elected, the new Mexico demands a new relationship with the United States.

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Mexicans consider respeto (respect) as indispensable as Americans consider liberty. And so, not surprisingly, the new Mexicans have demanded that they be respected in dealings with Washington.

President Bush has tried to be accommodating. After the Mexican national anthem, Bush welcomed Fox with a Spanish greeting and a 21-gun salute. And, in comments that likely reverberated far and wide, he even declared that the United States has "no more important relationship in the world'' than the one it has with Mexico.

But actions speak louder than palabras. Now that many Americans are choking on the idea of amnesty for illegal immigrants, Bush's immigration advisers have tried to assure voters that any policy change won't take hold until after congressional elections in 2002.

That doesn't exactly reassure Fox that the administration is serious about striking an immigration accord. The man who wrested the Mexican presidency from a political party that controlled the office for 71 years knows full well that politics offers no guarantees. The American Congress that emerges from next year's election could be more hostile to amnesty than the current one, and this could be Fox's best chance at a deal.

So, Fox challenged Bush – "Jorge," as he calls him – to put his nerve where his mouth is. The Mexican president demanded that the first steps of an agreement should be taken by year's end.

That sort of assertiveness may have taken Americans by surprise, but it shouldn't have. For a foreign leader, Fox is less foreign than we might imagine. This is a Mexican president who plays against stereotype by not putting off until manana what he can do today. As someone whose grandfather hailed from Ohio and who was himself trained at an American school and employed with an American soft-drink company, Fox has a distinctively American quality that makes him famously impatient.

Consider that, during the Mexican election, Fox's campaign motto doubled as a taunt of his chief opponent, Francisco Labastida of the PRI. Leading in the polls, Labastida refused to debate Fox and tried to stall him.

"Hoy (today),'' chanted Fox. As in "Let's do it today.''

Now, Fox is once again getting impatient. Maybe that's because he smells more fear, coming this time from the porticos of the White House.

Like Labastida, Bush is playing with fire. Although a new Scripps Howard Poll taken in Bush's home state of Texas finds that nearly as many Hispanics oppose amnesty (39 percent) as favor it (44 percent), there may be a backlash from Mexican-Americans if they perceive that the administration is being disrespectful toward Mexico, their ancestral homeland.

Vicente Fox will not permit that. Not only does he understand the United States better than most Americans understand Mexico, he also realizes that there would be no negotiation in the first place if Americans did not have such an insatiable appetite for Mexican workers. It was that appetite that sent Republican Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas and Jesse Helms of North Carolina to Mexico City earlier this year to plead for Mexican support for a guest-worker program. This alone made it clear that, if there is an outstretched palm here, it belongs to Uncle Sam.

Now, it is not Fox's responsibility to keep Bush out of tight spots by sparing him from making the sort of tough decisions that leaders are supposed to make. Fox has the right to ask for amnesty and Bush and others have the right to ask for guest workers. Neither is good policy, but we're beyond that. At stake now is something more important – determining the exact nature of the relationship between one sovereign nation and another. I don't care what language he uses, Bush has to put up or shut up. Either the United States will engage the new Mexico in a new, fairer and more equal relationship, or it won't.

So what will it be, Jorge?