``As I was walking up the stairs, I saw a man who wasn't there.

``He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd go away.''

The conventional wisdom among these ``experts'' is that instead of isolating the Cuban regime through embargo and the denial of diplomatic ties, we should undermine it with Levis, Big Macs and Spring Breakers. So strongly held is this belief that when it is continually rebuffed in Congress, a scapegoat is found -- the Cuban-exile community.

This argument is most recently put forth by Thomas L. Friedman, the international affairs columnist for The New York Times. We reprinted his column on Thursday -- datelined Havana -- where he opened with the assertion that ``American foreign policy toward Cuba . . . isn't just 15 degrees off; it's 360 degrees wrong.''

Put aside for the moment the fact that when something is 360 degrees off course it is, by definition, on course. Mr. Friedman contended that the current policy of boycott and isolation hasn't worked ``in any direction'' because Fidel Castro remains in power 40 years after the revolution. The scapegoats?

In the columnist's words, this policy is driven by ``a blind hunger for revenge against Castro by a small, exile Cuban-American minority . . . and a blind hunger for campaign contributions from this Cuban minority by U.S. congressmen.''

Mr. Friedman, with due respect, is 180 degrees off here, demonstrably so. Truth is, the money that anti-embargo Cuban exiles contribute to politicians is not just unimpressive, but relatively paltry.

The Free Cuba PAC, the main anti-Castro political action committee, gave just $135,200 in the last election cycle, which was typical. That's only slightly more than was given by the Irish-American Democrats and the Arab-American PAC, to list two comparable examples.

That contrasts with the $2 million spread around by the National Rifle Association. Even the Gay and Lesbian Fund ponied up $485,000 in that cycle. What's more, a good chunk of the Free Cuba PAC's money went to such liberal Democrats as Patrick J. Kennedy, Robert Wexler, Dick Gephardt and Peter Deutsch. Like cummings' man upon the stair, exile money is simply not there, yet critics demand that they go away.

I question, too, the premise that U.S. policy must be a failure because Castro remains. Have the experts forgotten that until a decade ago the Cuban economy received a $9-billion subsidy from the Soviet Union every year?

Since that time, Cuba has been able to trade with 160 nations -- including most of the European Union, Canada and Mexico, which hoped their trade ties would influence Cuba's human-rights behavior. Still nothing. Doesn't that make their policies of engagement failures?

Winston Churchill famously described democracy as the world's worst form of government -- except for all the others. So it is for U.S.-Cuba policy, 360 degrees on course.