House Majority Whip Tom DeLay says it made him ashamed to be an American. Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat, says it was insensitive and crude to do it on Easter weekend. Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson says it was “unnecessary, unlawful, ill-advised and ham-handed,” but then urges calm. Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush both say they’d have done it differently, but don’t say how.

It’s clear now that, at least among the political class, it was never about Elian Gonzalez. It was never about helping a scared little boy recover from the most frightful ordeal imaginable, or about reuniting him with his loving and anguished father, or about working to bring about a peaceful and sensible resolution to a situation rooted in the antitheses. It was always about gaining advantage, scoring points, pettifoggery and fence-straddling.

Certainly, there would have better ways to bring father and son back together than through a pre-dawn raid by federal agents. Better ways, though, had been precluded by Elian’s intransigent Miami relatives and that city’s inflamatory and self-promoting anti-Castro industry. The photo of frightened Elian being rooted out a closet by an armed federal agent isn’t the entire picture — not shown are Uncle Lazaro and the Little Havana pols who put him there.

Now come claims that the photos of Elian and his father, Juan Miguel, at their reunion are doctored. In this media-frenzied political environment, sworn statements and technical assessments of their authenticity, the genuine joy on those two faces are given no more weight than baseless claims of fakery. Obvious signs that the Miami relatives and the Little Havana leaders were growing increasingly stubborn, demanding conditions that made Elian’s father no more than just another claimant on the boy are countered with unexamined assertions that agreement was close on some mysterious six-point plan.

The basic question here has always been who speaks for a 6-year-old child in dealing with the immigration system. The answer is his surviving parent, in the absence of any evidence of abuse or neglect. The parent doesn’t want asylum, he doesn’t want to get on TV, he doesn’t want a book deal. He wants his son back and, unless the photo doctors worked overtime this weekend, the feeling seems mutual.

The federal appeals court ruled last week that Elian should stay in this country until the procedural issues of due process are worked through. That’s the fair and right thing to do for this remarkable little boy and now it can be done without his being constantly paraded through the spotlight.

Back when this entire extravaganza started, there was some hope that this child, having survived this terror at sea, might be the miracle worker who gets political leaders in Washington and Miami to rationally reassess 40 years of irrational policy towards Cuba. It hasn’t happened yet and, apparently as long as there is advantage to gain and points to score, it never will.