There’s a simple way Barack Obama can take this campaign by the scruff of the neck and do something marvelous at the same time.
Go to Kenya. Or at least promise to go to Kenya. Send Bill Richardson to Kenya, as a personal emissary, and offer to meet the two disputants to sign a settlement of their dispute.
Barack Obama has the same interest in Kenya as Bill Clinton had in Ireland, when he offered help in that dispute. Moreover, Obama’s paternal grandmother still lives there. And the dispute is similar, with tribes substituting for religious groups. A civil war is raging, and it must be stopped.
There’s another reason to get into the middle of this, which is to illustrate the damage the Bush Junta has done to America’s cause. Since the Supreme Court selection of 2000’s loser, we’ve seen repeated examples of contempt for democratic process, when that process might result in a change of regime.
Kenya’s isn’t the first election to be stolen this decade, just the
most recent. Everyone with half a brain knows Mexico’s most recent
election was stolen. Everyone knows Zimbabwe’s democracy has been
stolen. Pakistan’s is in the process of being stolen.
In all these cases the American Administration and (to their eternal shame) the American news media has walked away, told the "losers" to STFU, and treated the illegitimate regimes as legitimate, even fairly elected.
Today there are
literally dozens of regimes around the world which claim to be nominal
democracies but are, in fact, anything but. They talk the talk without
walking the walk, and we let them get away with it.
The key to democracy isn’t the process, but the result. Democracy delivers flexibility by forcing people to cede power. It forces responsibility onto opposition groups, putting them in power and telling them, fix the problems. Or be replaced.
Democracy is meaningless unless more than one party is allowed to win. America has survived for 200 years because we allow these revolutions, major and minor, on a regular basis — locally, statewide, nationally. Every election is a potential revolution on some level of government, but only by accepting the result and ceding power does any nation embrace democracy, and stand for it.
There is, of course, an important domestic reason for Obama to get involved with Kenya. It reminds Americans of Republican dirty tricks going back 40 years. It gets them revved up for November. It’s good for the party. It helps our own revolution.
But mainly it answers the most serious charge I and others are laying against both Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton. You’re in power. What are you doing? Why aren’t you leading?
Stop talking. Make it happen.
We might end up trapped in the Darfur paradox – we have to DO something, but it’s like playing King Canute. Other than that, yes. I agree. As for Bill Richardson, a local cartoon summed it up. He returns, suitcases in hand, to say “I’m baaaack!” and the New Mexico Taxpayer is shown scratching his head ans saying “Do I know you?”
We might end up trapped in the Darfur paradox – we have to DO something, but it’s like playing King Canute. Other than that, yes. I agree. As for Bill Richardson, a local cartoon summed it up. He returns, suitcases in hand, to say “I’m baaaack!” and the New Mexico Taxpayer is shown scratching his head ans saying “Do I know you?”