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.

Friends, Foes and Who Knows?

The Musharraf Mess should remind Presidential candidates and voters that we are not living in Bush World any more, where other countries are either allies or enemies, good or bad guys to whom we either send tons of money or bunker-busting bombs.

Belatedly, the Administration is leaking word that they have doubts that Musharraf "can survive in office and have begun discussing what might come next."

Lesson #1 for the next President: If your foreign-policy people take five years to discover a not-very-subtle military dictator has been blowing smoke about his dedication to democracy and playing us for saps about opposing Islamic extremists, you need a whole new State Department and CIA. Or if they have been doing their jobs and nobody around you has been listening, you are surrounded by the wrong people.

Lesson #2: When an iffy ally like Musharraf is sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons, you don't want to wait until he is on the way out to start finding out where those weapons are, who controls them and reaching out to those who do.

Lesson # 3: Have all the photo ops you want with the Saudis, Iraqi Sunnis and al-Maliki's mob, but keep a close eye on what they are doing when there are no lights and cameras.

In a world where foreign relations have morphed from checkers to three-dimensional chess, the next White House is going to need a new generation of policy makers and analysts who can see beyond the outdated clichés of the Kissingers, Brzezinskis and Podhoretzes.

Voters should be looking for clues about candidates who understand that.