THE undoing of Zoe Baird's nomination for US Attorney-General, the top law-enforcement official, is richly revealing.
It exposes an undercurrent of class resentment against shakers and movers who exempt themselves from the rules they expect others to live by. It highlights, once again, the urgent need for day-care in an era of working couples and single parents. And it serves notice to Bill Clinton that his presidency is tethered to public opinion by a short leash, hope and enthusiasm notwithstanding.
Ms Baird's defeat last weekend also suggests a double-edged double-standard when it comes to women in politics. Surely it's true that a man with her narrow qualifications would never have been selected to be Attorney-General. But surely it is likewise true that a male nominee would not have been politically decapitated for so commonplace a crime: employing two undocumented workers as domestic servants.
Most of all, perhaps, ''Nannygate'' reminds us of a deep and growing ambivalence in America's attitude towards immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
Among the most durable of American truisms is this: the US is a proud patchwork quilt of immigrants who come to its shores in search of fortune, in flight from persecution, or both. The Statue of Liberty stands as a sentimental symbol of equal opportunity, a siren beckoning the world's tired and hungry, its poor and huddled masses, an affirmation of the nobility of humble origins.
The US Government has frequently declared blanket amnesties for long-time illegal residents, asking only for documentary proof that they have lived and worked here for a certain time. More recently, the state has even initiated an annual visa lottery, giving away 40,000 green cards to the lucky 1-in-100 whose names are drawn. (The pool includes 16 countries with 13,000 slots reserved for citizens of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. The only Asian nations on the list are Indonesia and Japan.) We like to think all Americans were immigrants once, and thus should embrace all who follow. Discrimination becomes, in this light, an act of hypocrisy. Indeed, that we are a nation of immigrants has become part of the national mythology.
But this particular myth fulfils both meanings of the world: it is not only a sense of self-identity, but a half-truth, at best. Native Americans, to begin with, have no place in this rose-tinted vision. Nor do many black Americans, whose ancestors experienced America as a land of oppression not opportunity, have reason to embrace the immigrant myth.