They knew. They're sophisticated leaders. They understood an inevitability presaged
 by the law. They knew that the exile community was careening toward traumatic
 disappointment.

 They knew this weeks ago. A bevy of law professors and practicing lawyers have
 offered repeated variations of the same theme: The Gonzalez family eventually would
 be ordered to surrender Elian to his father's custody. They knew that the hopes of the
 exile community would be thwarted by execution of either immigration or family law.

 The leaders knew. Yet they did little to prepare the community for what, at least
 among the Cuban exiles, will soon end in brutal disillusionment.

 Miami needed leadership with the courage to de-escalate expectations. We got
 considerably less.

 We were treated to a few outbreaks of defiant demagoguery, denouncing the
 president and the attorney general (one of the few South Floridians who has
 demonstrated courage and leadership) as Castro sympathizers.

 Mostly, though, we got cheap exploitation, with a string of politicians coming to
 Little Havana for a photo opportunity with the befuddled little castaway. They
 happily contributed to the sad conversion of a father's child into a city's
 pseudo-religious icon.

 It didn't help that the struggle for custody of the child unfolded in a presidential
 election year.

 Neither of the presumed presidential nominees, George W. Bush or Al Gore,
 discouraged those who thought that their righteous anti-Castro fervor would trump
 a father's parental rights.

 Both nominees knew, but they would not utter the unhappy reality that was bound
 to engulf Miami. Not in an election year.

 Understand, my quarrel is not with the depth of feeling exhibited along the streets
 of Little Havana. At least, these folks breathe. They're alive while most of us
 wallow about in a fog of apathy, saving our fervor for the vagaries of the Nasdaq or
 maybe the playoff prospects of the Panthers or the Heat.

 North of the Miami-Dade County line, folks can hardly summon enough civic
 interest to vote, much less hit the streets. At least the crowds down Northwest
 Second Street acknowledge an existence that transcends the next query on Who
 Wants to Be a Millionaire?

 But real leadership, instead of exploiting that passion, might have prepared those
 folks for a harder reality fast coming to Miami. Instead, they've managed to make
 the gap between the exile community and the rest of us seem a canyon.

 This week, a producer from Fox Television News called from New York. She was
 looking for someone, for the network's never-ending 24-hour-news-cycle,
 talking-head Elian debate, who was, as she put it, ``pro-Castro.''

 Her words provided a stunning revelation. The exile community complains bitterly
 about misrepresentation in the press, yet their leadership stridently characterizes
 anyone hereabouts who thinks Elian belongs with his father as something
 approaching a Fidelista. Certainly, that sentiment seems to have reached New
 York, or at least the New York operations of a famously shallow news operation. I
 hung up, depressed about the outsider view of Miami.

 Real leadership would have thwarted such distortions. Real leadership would have
 anticipated what's now upon us.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald