In international politics, there is some good news and some bad news.
In international politics, the good news is that Cambodia’s king abdicated two days ago.
The bad news is that they’re going to get another one.
But even that cloud has a silver lining. Whatever the faults of quasi-hereditary monarchy, and whatever sort of political tool the new king may turn out to be, he is still someone other than old King Sihanouk.
BANGKOK — Southeast Asia’s wiliest political survivor yesterday
completed his own intricately scripted exit from the stage. King
Norodom Sihanouk, who first took Cambodia’s throne when Nazi-backed
Vichy France controlled Indochina in 1941, stunned his subjects
last week by announcing he would voluntarily abdicate and allow his
untested son, Prince Norodom Sihamoni, to replace him.
The formal transfer, endorsed in yesterday’s unanimous decision by
the country’s nine-member throne council in Phnom Penh, thrust the
51-year-old prince, a trained classical dancer based in Paris since
the 1970s, into the international limelight and ended the reign of
the only monarch most Cambodians have ever known.
It’s insufferable enough to read whitewashed obituaries of rotten people–let alone to read this kind of kid-glove treatment when the asshole isn’t even deceased yet. A certain degree of restraint toward the recently dead is one thing; shameless kissing of the royal rings is another. King Sihanouk spent the past 63 years as either a tyrant, a pretender, or a figurehead; during that time he consorted with and covered for the French colonialists, Imperial Japan, the Vietminh, North Vietnam and the Vietcong, the Khmer Rouge, and finally the United States and the United Nations. His “wily survival” consisted in murdering and suppressing political opposition, and ingratiating himself with the murderers of millions.
When communist fighters in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos achieved
victory in 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge immediately ordered all
residents to leave Phnom Penh and all other cities overnight,
inaugurating their killing fields regime.
But the king flew to New York in 1975 and told the United Nations
that the Khmer Rouge evacuation of cities had been achieved
without bloodshed and he convinced exiled Cambodian
intellectuals, military officers and others to return home to
support the new regime.
When they did, they were killed alongside more than 1 million other
Cambodians, victims of the Khmer Rouge’s policies of mass
executions, enslavement, torture and starvation.
After King Sihanouk’s return in 1976, the Khmer Rouge put him under
house arrest and murdered several of his relatives.
Vietnam invaded in 1979 and ousted Pol Pot. In 1982, King Sihanouk
lent his support to a loose, Khmer Rouge-led, U.S.-financed
guerrilla alliance, to end the Vietnamese occupation.
The Washington Times describes such a man as Southeast Asia’s wiliest political survivor, a tough act … to follow, and a unique figure among world leaders (I suppose that Idi Amin was a unique figure, too.)
For Pete’s sake. Just what does a King have to do to get some disrespect around here?
Yes. When the president had an
opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took
his focus off of him, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords and
Osama bin Laden escaped. Six months after he said Osama bin Laden
must be caught dead or alive this president was asked, where’s
Osama bin Laden? And he said, I don’t know. I don’t really think
about very much. I’m not that concerned. We need a president
who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.
Mr. President.
Gosh, I don’t think I ever said I’m not
worried about Osama bin Laden. That’s kind of one of those
exaggerations.
No, it’s not. Thanks to the Daily Mislead, we have the sources ready at hand:
But don’t you believe that the threat that bin
Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead
or alive?
Well, as I say, we haven’t heard
much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center
of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I
— I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about
him.
The candidates sucked. The questions went unanswered. I can’t say that I necessarily blame the candidates for that, though, since the questions mostly sucked, too.
Next question to you, Senator Kerry.
The gap between rich and poor is growing wider. More people are
dropping into poverty. Yet the minimum wage has been stuck at,
what, $5.15 an hour now for about seven years. Is it time to raise
it?
Well, I’m glad you raised that question.
It’s long overdue time to raise the minimum wage.
And America, this is one of those issues that separates the
president and myself. We have fought to try to raise the minimum
wage in the last years, but the Republican leadership of the House
and Senate won’t even let us have a vote on it. We’re not allowed
to vote on it. They don’t want to raise the minimum wage.
The minimum wage is the lowest minimum wage value it has been in
our nation in 50 years. If we raise the minimum wage, which I will
do over several years, to $7 an hour, 9.2 million women who are
trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year.
The president has denied 9.2 million women $3,800 a year. But he
doesn’t hesitate to fight for $136,000 to a millionaire. One
percent of America got $89 billion last year in a tax cut. But
people working hard, playing by the rules, trying to take care of
their kids, family values that we’re supposed to value so much in
America — I’m tired of politicians who talk about family values
and don’t value families. What we need to do is raise the minimum
wage.
We also need to hold on to equal pay. Women work for 76
cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That’s not right
in America. And we had an initiative that we were working
on to raise women’s pay. They’ve cut it off. They’ve stopped it.
They don’t enforce these kinds of things.
Now I think that it is a matter of fundamental right that if we
raise the minimum wage 15 million Americans would be positively
affected. We’d put money into the hands of people who work hard,
who obey the rules, who play for the American dream. And if we did
that we’d have more consumption ability in America, which is what
we need right now in order to kick our economy into gear. I will
fight tooth and nail to pass the minimum wage.
And kudos to Mr. Bush for achieving the single most transparent transition onto message that I’ve ever heard from a politician (and that’s saying something). On the same question:
Mr. President.
Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum
wage plan that I supported that would have increased the minimum
wage.
But let me talk about what’s really important for the worker you’re
referring to, and that’s to make sure the education system works,
it’s to make sure we raise standards. Listen, the No Child Left
Behind Act is really a jobs act, when you think about it. The No
Child Left Behind Act says we’ll raise standards, we’ll increase
federal spending. But in return for extra spending, we now want
people to measure, states and local jurisdictions to measure, to
show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and
subtract.
… And so on. He talked about No Child Left Behind for the rest of the response time.
Bob Schieffer was terrible. The questions were terrible, and Schieffer breezed past opportunity after opportunity for desperately needed follow-ups. His one good moment for the night came when he actually directly asked one of my two questions for George W. Bush. A while after Mr. Bush muttered this empty platitude…
I think it’s important to promote a
culture of life. I think a hospitable society is a society where
every being counts and every person matters. I believe the ideal
world is one in which every child is protected in law and welcomed
to life.
I understand there’s great differences on this issue of abortion.
But I believe reasonable people can come together and put good law
in place that will help reduce the number of abortions.
… Schieffer actually came back around and asked, point blank:
Mr. President I want to go back to
something Senator Kerry said earlier tonight and ask a follow-up of
my own. He said, and this will be a new question to you, he said
that you had never said whether you would like to overturn
Roe v. Wade. So I’d ask you directly would you like to?
What he’s asking me is will I have a
litmus test for my judges. And the answer is no, I will not have a
litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the
Constitution. But I’ll have no litmus tests.
Kerry got off to a fantastic start in his response:
Thank you very much. Well again,
the president didn’t answer the question. I’ll answer it
straight to America. I’m not going to appoint a judge to the court
who’s going to undo a constitutional right, whether it’s the First
Amendment or the Fifth Amendment or some other right that’s given
under our courts today under the Constitution. And I believe that
the right of choice is a constitutional right. So I don’t intend to
see it undone. Clearly the president wants to leave an ambivalence
or intends to undo it.
Mate in two moves. Bush either has to answer this–in which case there is no politically acceptable answer for him to give–or else he simply refuses to answer the question again, in which case you simply point to his record and say that his silence here speaks volumes.
So what does Kerry do? Ah, yes, of course. Before he finishes he decides it’s time to insert a canned soundbite about racial equality (why? because women’s equality isn’t good enough to have a 90 second response on its own?) and No Child Left Behind:
Let me go a step further. We have a long distance yet to travel in
terms of fairness of America. I don’t know how you can govern in
this country when you look at New York City and you see that 50
percent of the black males there are unemployed. When you see 40
percent of Hispanic children or black children in some cities
dropping out of high school. And yet the president who talks about
No Child Left Behind refused to fully fund by $28 billion that
particular program so you can make a difference in the lives of
those young people. Now right here in Arizona that difference would
have been $131 million to the state of Arizona to help its kids be
able to have better education and to lift the property tax burden
from its citizens. The president reneged on his promise to fund No
Child Left Behind. He’ll tell you he’s raised the money and he has.
But he didn’t put in what he promised. And that makes a difference
in the lives of our children.
… which of course allowed Mr. Bush to spend his 30 second follow-up on talking about No Child Left Behind. And that was it for the night on reproductive rights and women’s equality.
Good job, genius.
Well, not quite. Bob Schieffer did decide to wrap up with his idea of throwing a bone to women’s issues:
We’ve come gentlemen, to our last
question. And it occurred to me as I came to this debate tonight
that the three of us share something. All three of us are
surrounded by very strong women. We’re all married to strong women.
Each of us have two daughters that make us very proud. I’d like to
ask each of you what is the most important thing you’ve learned
from these strong women?
