Castro and Karl Rove, Commentators

Fidel just won't go away and, like Bush's Brain in Newsweek, he has to give us his expertise on '08.

“I enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States,” Castro wrote this week about reaction to his stepping down in a column for Cuba's state-run newspaper. “One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter.”

Castro also had a few words about theme of change that has dominated the campaign: "Half a century of blockade was not enough for the chosen few. 'Change, change, change!' they shouted in unison. I agree. Change!--but in the United States."

After noting the first President Bush's endorsement of John McCain, Castro remarked on the current President's visit to Africa, "I don't know what he's doing there."

Karl Rove could tell him. Now that they both have time on their hands, the Western Hemisphere's two leading political manipulators might want to get together and exchange secrets of the trade.

If Fidel wants to learn a thing or two, he might watch 60 Minutes Sunday night, for an interview with a Rove operative explaining how the Master ordered her to take sexually compromising pictures of a Democratic governor. That's Rove's definition of an "embarrassing position."

Cuba's Next President and Ours

The man who plagued the White House from JFK on won't be around for the next occupant, although the turmoil of his succession may be more of a problem than he himself has been in recent years for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain in their campaigning in Florida and elsewhere.

From several generations of Cuban-Americans, Castro's announcement that he is stepping down will elicit joy and hope, shadowed by bitter sorrow over decades of exile from their native land. Feelings will run high again.

For once, perhaps because he is continents away from home, George W. Bush sounded presidential today in noting "the question really should be what does this mean for the people in Cuba. They are the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro."

Bush expressed hope this would be "the beginning of a democratic transition for the people of Cuba...An interesting debate will arise. Some will say let's promote stability. In the meantime political prisoners will rot...This should be a transition to free and fair elections. And I mean free and fair. Not these elections that the Castro brothers rig."

Nepotism and iffy elections are not a strong suit for the man who took power in 2000, but we can be grateful that he won't be in office long enough to help the Cuban people find democracy as he has been doing in Iraq. His successor will have to find subtler ways.