My guess is that Cuba will be a significant issue in the general election, because it is a telltale for the approach of the opposing candidates toward communism, a test of American capability and willingness to promote economic development in poor countries, and inevitably the major thumb on the scales of voting in Florida.

If the Republican candidate does not win Florida, he has little chance to win the election.

The Republicans are likely to

continue to see Cuba through Cold War glasses. They will see it as a last bastion of communism. In fact, China and Russia are of course still communist countries, and yet the United States no longer treats either as an enemy. Instead, under the Bush Administration China has become the object of increasingly beseeching entreaties -- our Treasury Secretary has become an ambassador to China, focussing on trying to increase the value of their currency, so as to decrease the amount of their exports to the United States and to diminish the relative power of their hold over the American economy derived from their ownership of American dollars. And as to Russia the President famously saw Putin's soul and apparently blinked at the vision of autocracy that is crystal clear to the rest of the world, and especially Russians.

If the Republicans were to treat Cuba as they have treated Russia and China in the last eight years, they would open up trade, encourage cross-investment, drop limits on travel, and insist that capitalism should precede democracy since the freedom to invest inevitably leads to freedom of speech, religion, and association.

I'm not saying this syllogism is wrong; I'm just pointing out that the Republicans are inconsistent in their approach to communism country by country.

What will the Cuban emigres in Florida want? They are now fifty years removed from their original diaspora: two and three generations later they are not likely to want to move back, but they are very likely to want to invest, build, visit, and in myriad ways link the societies and economies of the peninsula and the island.

The people of Cuba are miserably and unnecessarily poor. They are numerous, literate, and very likely to be able to grow economically at a rapid rate, if only their horribly misguided and cruel government were not in the way of progress. Cuban economic growth in turn would stimulate the American economy, just as Chinese and European growth is helping the United States fight recession now.

There's every reason, then, to focus on economic growth as the key immediate goal for Cuba. Will the Republicans, who embrace that goal for their China and Russia policies, adopt this approach to Cuba, or will they instead advocate a more interventionist and bellicose strategy?