Tipping Point

About 20 years ago, a terrific newsletter, whose name unfortunately escapes me, regularly published a quantitative content analysis of the issues that major newspapers and network evening news programs were covering. Each week's report included precise measurements that indicated which topics were emerging or declining in the news based on column inches and seconds of airtime.

The numbers were multiplied by the readership of each paper and the viewership of each news program. In some ways, it was like the poll question "What is the most important problem facing the country?"

If that newsletter existed today, over the last couple of weeks it would have shown the meteoric jump in news coverage of drug-related violence in Mexico and the resulting fear that the effects will spill into the United States. If the American International Group's bonuses were not already dominating the news last week, the Mexican drug war story no doubt would have been.

Ironically, even though Juarez, Mexico -- where the corrupted police force was recently disarmed by the Mexican military -- is arguably the most besieged city in that country, El Paso, Texas, just across the border, has been one of the three safest large (population over 500,000) cities in America, along with Honolulu and San Jose, Calif. It's fair to ask how many truly innocent Americans have been harmed in the United States by spillover violence.

The crisis is very real for our neighbors to the south, however. Mexico's government is battling drug cartels that are as well financed as the governments of some Central American nations. The cartels are as well armed, well organized, and sophisticated as any organized-crime gang in the world.

The last thing the drug lords want to see is U.S. Special Forces rerouted to Mexico. Yet the rising instability in that country and the international implications of the upheaval are serious enough for Washington to take notice.

In his Tuesday night news conference and in an announcement earlier in the day, President Obama reiterated his commitment to prevent a spillover of violence and indicated that his administration will increase efforts to stop the wire transfers of cash from drug sales in the U.S. to cartel members in Mexico.

Notwithstanding Lou Dobbs's diatribes, this is not an immigration problem; it is a drug cartel problem. To be sure, though, the situation will make it more difficult for Obama to get a comprehensive immigration reform law through Congress. It's just too easy for foes of such legislation to connect the dots -- fairly or not.

A border fence will not solve the problems that the Mexican drug cartels cause in this country. The vast majority of the drugs smuggled into the United States aren't in the backpacks or pockets or suitcases of people swimming the Rio Grande or dodging rattlesnakes in the desert. Most of the drugs come through border crossings in secret compartments in cars, trucks, and buses. New tools, particularly adaptations of X-ray technology that can identify anomalies in images of vehicles and containers, show great promise in spotting these shipments.

The challenges posed by the drug cartels present Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano an opportunity to show strength by fully funding the Merida Initiative, which President Bush signed last year, to provide $1.4 billion to Mexico for training and for helicopters and other equipment to fight the cartels. So far, the U.S. has made good on less than half of that promise.

The potential for this Mexican crisis to trigger the worst kind of demagoguery in U.S. politics is great, which is why the administration needs to keep intelligently addressing the problem now, before political campaigns reach a fever pitch next year. The Texas Border Coalition, which represents the localities that touch the Mexican border and are presumably in the most danger, is urging Obama to fully fund the Merida Initiative.

Given the severity of the economic recession and the fear, anxiety, and frustration that Americans are already feeling from our many domestic challenges, the danger is very real that the Mexican crisis will give rise to U.S. demagoguery and racism that blind us to the real question: Would we rather send greenbacks today or Green Berets tomorrow?