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People love to make up their own stories about American history, especially when it comes to politics. Sometimes it helps to go to the videotape.

SFGate, the digital arm of The San Francisco Chronicle, did us all the favor of digging up this clip from a debate for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. The contestants? Future president George H.W. Bush, some guy who never gets to talk, and the patron saint of modern conservatism, Ronald Reagan.

From the get-go, you know this is not a 2016 debate. First of all, the town-hall style question actually comes from the audience, not a pre-screened Facebook video. (A young Texan asks the trio whether illegal aliens—a term apparently already in vogue—should be able to attend Texas public schools for free, as citizens do.) Second, the candidates actually defer to each other as to who gets to answer first, rather than jump at the chance to bite someone's head off.

But then, of course, there's the substance of their responses. Bush starts it off, calling for a more comprehensive solution to the problem of illegal immigration, something that still eluded Congress 33 years later:

"I'd like to see something done about the illegal alien problem that would be so sensitive, and so understanding about labor needs, and human needs, that that problem wouldn't come up. But today, if those people are here, I would reluctantly say they would get whatever it is, what society is giving their neighbors. But the problem has to be solved ... We're creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law, and secondly we're exacerbating relations with Mexico. The answer to your question is much more fundamental than whether they attend Houston schools, it seems to me. I don't want to see ... six- and eight-year-old kids, being made, you know, one, totally uneducated, and being made to feel that they're living outside the law. Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals. These are good people, strong people. Part of my family is a Mexican."

Imagine someone pulling that commie crap today at a Republican debate. He'd probably get deported on the spot. Keep in mind, this is now a party with a Congressional leader—and kingmaker in the early primary state of Iowa—who refers to people who cross the Southern border illegally as "deportables."

But then it's Reagan's turn.

"I think the time has come that the United States and our neighbors—particularly our neighbor to the south—should have a better understanding and a better relationship than we've ever had. But I think that we haven't been sensitive enough to our size, and our power. They have a problem of 40 to 50 percent unemployment. Now this cannot continue without the possibility arising—with regard to that other country that we talked about, of Cuba and everything it is stirring up—of the possibility of trouble below the border. And we could have a very hostile and strange neighbor on our border."

So there's some Cold War boogedy-boogedy, but it at least makes some logical sense. He continues:

"Rather than making them, of talking about putting up a fence, why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they're working and earning here, they pay taxes here. And when they want to go back they can go back, and cross. And open the border both ways, by understanding their problems. This is the only safety valve they have right now, with that unemployment, that probably keeps the lid from blowing off...And I think we could have a fine relationship."

Work visas? Open borders? Understanding that migrant workers are responding to larger economic forces that play a defining role in where prosperity—or even a steady job—can be found? This is the kind of talk you'd expect from someone who'd grant amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the U.S., which, of course, Reagan did.

The most striking thing at work here, though, is the overwhelming compassion and humanity of the candidates' tones and solutions. These are not dark forces slipping through the border to undermine the American way of life, they're people seeking work. And since when do we care about relations with Mexico? I thought we were going to build a wall and make them pay for it.

Now remember Ted Cruz's responses to these questions. Think of how H.W.'s own son, whose wife is the Mexican in the family who's referenced above, has been forced to respond to so far (barely) survive the nomination process. Times they are a-changin'.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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