It took him a long time, but Sen. John McCain finally said what he needed to say to score some points with Latino voters.

In last Wednesday's presidential debate, McCain brought up immigration, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the pending free trade agreement with Colombia, and made Sen. Barack Obama defend his absurd position on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.

For many Latinos, McCain is on the right side of all those arguments. But he had failed to articulate his position on those issues before a national audience.

Had he done it much earlier — perhaps during the Republican National Convention or even one month ago, during his first debate with Obama — perhaps he could have built some new momentum in the swing states where Latino voters could make a big difference.

But with so little time left before Election Day, it was probably too little, too late.

Don't get me wrong. McCain and his Latino surrogates have been talking about all those issues when they speak to Latinos through the Spanish-language news media. Yet obviously fearing a backlash from his anti-Hispanic supporters, McCain had refrained from raising these issues when he spoke on English-language networks.

This hypocritical facade alienated many Latinos and allowed Obama to gain Hispanic support as Democrats usually do — by default.

Amazingly, in all of the most important forums — from his speech at the Democratic National Convention to the three presidential debates — the word "immigration" never came out of Obama's mouth. Obviously, he is also afraid of the backlash from Americans who favor strong restrictions on immigration. Apparently, he figures that he already has too many other issues by which he can be labeled a liberal. If he is going to win the Latino vote anyway, why bother coming off as a liberal on immigration?

Even when McCain tried to raise the immigration issue in the last debate, neither Obama nor the moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, followed up on his statement. "You're running ads that misportray completely my position on immigration," McCain told Obama as the two candidates accused each other of engaging in negative campaigning. Obama, clearly taking the Latino vote for granted, didn't take McCain's bait to debate immigration.

Yet McCain kept trying to raise other issues that are important to Latinos. When they discussed our need to reduce oil imports, it was McCain who said we should eliminate the tariff on imported sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil. It was McCain who said we should eliminate our dependence not only on Middle Eastern oil but also Venezuelan oil.

Obama, who normally doesn't mention Venezuela when he talks about reducing our dependence on oil from potential enemies, then was forced to mention Venezuela, as well. But even then, his choice of words was peculiar. "I think that in 10 years, we can reduce our dependence so that we no longer have to import oil from the Middle East or Venezuela," Obama said. By using the word "or," he certainly gives himself a lot of leeway.

And by the way, don't you just love it when these candidates set goals that are to be met at a time when they no longer will be in office, even if they win and are re-elected? Whom are they fooling?

It was McCain who rightfully ridiculed Obama for suggesting that he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. "The Canadians said, 'Yes, and we'll sell our oil to China,'" McCain said. "You don't tell countries you're going to unilaterally renegotiate agreements with them."

Obama said he actually believes in free trade. (We all know he was driven into his anti-NAFTA position when he and Sen. Hillary Clinton were pandering to U.S. labor unions during the Democratic primaries.) "But I also believe that for far too long — certainly during the course of the Bush administration, with the support of Sen. McCain — the attitude has been that any trade agreement is a good trade agreement," Obama said.

Unfortunately, for political expediency, it is Obama who has adopted the attitude that no trade agreement is good. And McCain wasted no time in citing the best example: Colombia.

"Free trade with Colombia is something that's a no-brainer," McCain told Obama. "But maybe you ought to travel down there and visit them and maybe you could understand it a lot better."

In a boxing ring with Latino judges, that blow would have been scored as a knockdown. And McCain kept swinging: "Sen. Obama doesn't want a free trade agreement with our best ally in the region but wants to sit down across the table without precondition … with Hugo Chavez, the guy who has been helping FARC, the (Colombian) terrorist organization."

Let's face it: Obama can't even claim that he opposes the Colombian Free Trade Agreement because it would hurt American workers by sending U.S. jobs abroad. He knows it's not true. He knows that while Colombian products already enter this country duty-free, because of existing trade-preference laws, the agreement would eliminate high barriers for U.S. exports to Colombia.

And so Obama bases his objection on another phony excuse: "Labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis, and there have not been prosecutions," Obama said during the debate.

While that posture may please a few Latino leftists, it is nothing but phony rhetoric. Obama's excuses for opposing this agreement are an insult to the intelligence of anyone who knows that violence in Colombia has been curtailed dramatically under President Alvaro Uribe and that unless we support his government, violence against labor leaders is bound to get much worse. While about 200 Colombian union organizers were getting killed every year before Uribe, those murders are down to about 20 per year nowadays.

Yet Obama insisted that he understands the Colombian situation "pretty well." It was laughable. It makes you wonder why the polls say he is doing so well among Latino voters.

Granted, McCain's efforts were an act of desperation to try to gain some last-minute ground among Latinos. But Obama is just sitting back, collecting Latino support he doesn't deserve.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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