WHAT a difference 20 years make. I am thinking of Richard Holbrooke. Before he became familiar to us as the diplomatic face of the Af-Pak operation during the American intervention in Afghanistan, he was worried about the appropriateness of democracy in illiberal countries. With reference to the upcoming elections in Bosnia in 1996, he posited the following dilemma: What if elections are free and fair, and those elected are racists, fascists, and separatists?

What, indeed, now that the shoe is on the other foot? Americans have elected, for the second time, a man we can identify with so easily — indicted for a crime and one even his supporters won’t deny is a liar, a racist, and a sexist. Someone who believes elections can be stolen, refuses to concede, and incites an insurrection to overturn the verdict. Someone on record telling voters that if they elected him they would never need to vote again.

As long as such unpleasant outcomes occurred elsewhere, Americans were generous enough to restore decent governance with recourse to benevolent regime change. Of course, the offenders need not only be racists, fascists, and separatists; anyone who wouldn’t play ball with the Washington Consensus was a........

© Dawn