Zimbabwe Footnote

I wrote below about Zimbabwe's now week-old presidential and parliamentary election, for which the Zimbabwe Election Commission has yet to release "official" results. Since then, the ZEC has announced that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had won a majority of seats in Parliament, but nothing about the much anticipated presidential plebiscite. Will Robert Mugabe, president since independence, go--or will he desperately try to stay and at what cost to Zimbabwe and its people?

While the world is still waiting to see, the White House has now weighed in. According to spokeswoman Dana Perino, the Bush administration's position is "we are concerned about violence."

Not, "we are concerned about free and fair elections, democratic process, and violence."

No real surprise about the Bushies' priorities here, just the foolishness of this missed PR opportunity. When the world stage pitches you a softball--the chance to juxtapose yourselves against a reviled, corrupt dictator in the throes of stealing another election--you should hit it out of the park: "The United States is concerned about promoting democracy in..."

Perino didn't even swing.