Second World wannabes: Okay, so in a lot of ways Miami is like a Third World country. I mean, we have lots of undocumented workers, illegal immigrants from all over the world, high crime, high unemployment, we’re in a housing construction bust, cops are shooting civilians, there’s poops in the bay and on the beach, and traffic is horrendous. But I’m allowed to say that because I live here. I’m allowed to drive a car with a bumper sticker that refers to my city as a banana republic.

But Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo can’t, not on mine and Gov. Jeb Bush’s watch, no sirree Bob — or Tom.

Here’s what happened, according to the Miami Herald:

Tancredo, who has championed building a fence along the border with Mexico, pointed to Miami as an example of what could happen to the United States if immigration policies are not tightened. He said of Miami in an interview with a conservative on-line news site, “You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country.”

Gov. Jeb was quick to come to our defense:

”The bottom line is Miami is a wonderful city filled with diversity and heritage that we choose to celebrate, not insult,” Bush said in the letter addressed to Tancredo’s Washington office. “Miami has been my home for years and I am looking forward to returning there in January.”

Of course, Jeb’s not. Returning to Miami in January, that is. No, he just bought a million-dollar condo in Coral Gables, which technically is near Miami, though legally a sovereign city unto itself, without virtually any Third Worldliness about it at all.

I, on the other hand, live in the City of Miami, and therefore I can call Miami Third World because I have seen the chickens running in the streets and I’ve also seen them lying in the road, hapless victims of a Santeria ritual intended to give Tio Santos good luck on his traffic court hearing.

But even I cannot top Ana Menendez, star columnist for the Herald whose column on Tancredo’s “naivete,” as Jeb so boldly characterized it, appeared today in the same edition as the article on Tancredo’s name-calling. She asks the age-old question that we here at Pensito Review pose at least several times an hour:

But it’s always a dilemma — how to deal with guys like Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo. Do you ridicule them with like-minded barbs — recalling that few people ever take rising demagogues seriously — or do you waste your formidable intelligence trying to engage an eggplant?

Menendez provides greater insight into Tancredo’s remark than the news story could. For one thing, she looked up “tancredo” and found that it means “thoughtful council.” Hey, it’s one thing to be Rep. Barney Frank and to tell it like it is, but it’s another to have a name that means “thoughtful council” and be a mouth-foaming meathead:

I mean, this is the guy who, after The Denver Post published a report about an illegal immigrant struggling to pay for college, called up the immigration agency to have him deported. The guy who thinks President Bush is going soft. The guy who last year told a radio show that the United States should ”take out” Islamic holy sites if fundamentalists attacked this country.

”You’re talking about bombing Mecca?” the radio host asked, just to clarify.

”Yeah,” Thoughtful Counsel responded.

But Menendez, with a columnist’s sharp eye for material, recognizes the value in Tancredo’s continued existence on the planet and access to microphones and suchlike:

Yeah. How do you reason with a guy whose supporters make Genghis Khan look like Gandhi? The more off-the-wall and ”politically incorrect” (the politically correct term for ”racist”) he is, the more the folks in his district seem to love him.

They’ll love him for this column. So let me just say up front, I love him more, especially for the Olympic-worthy squirming he induces in fellow Republicans.

Take his recent comments about our ‘hood that have the Miami-Dade delegation in a tizzy and Gov. Jeb Bush chastising the congressman.

”Look at what has happened to Miami,” Tancredo said at a recent jousting festival, or something like that, in Palm Beach. “It has become a Third World country.”

Tancredo made the comments to a conservative on-line news site and they would have gone unnoticed had The Miami Herald’s Lesley Clark not dug them up.

But never fear! Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is here to defend the city:

”I invite my friend, Tom, to visit beautiful Miami,” she said. “Come on down, Tom, the water’s fine!”

The water’s fine? You have one free shot at Tancredo and the best you can come up with is ”the water’s fine”? Really. It would have been so much better if Ileana had unleashed her word power (I know she has it!) and said: “Come on down, vile and evil mountain tyrant, the water’s full of stingrays and alligators, you pathetic mommy’s boy!”

Menendez sums up by pointing out why parts of the United States, Miami included, might look like the Third World:

As for ”Third World” being some kind of insult, it’s all in how you look at it. It’s true that the gap between rich and poor — a hallmark of underdevelopment and corruption — has grown in the United States. But guess which party’s policies are to blame?

At the same time, Miami is full of third-world doctors from India, university presidents from Cuba and engineers from the Middle East. If I felt it would make a difference, I would mention all that. But that would be engaging an eggplant. And thoughtful counsel suggests it would be a terrible waste of time.