The refusal by Democrats in Congress to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney represents a monumental political and public diplomacy failure, trumping even their inability to offer more than half-assed opposition to the continuing occupation of Iraq. Michelle Obama recently said that “the world will look at America differently” if her husband is elected president; maybe so, for a few minutes, but then the world will tire of gazing upon Obama’s chocolatey goodness and start looking again at our behavior. If we want to change the perception of this country then we need to reject the actions that shaped the perception and at least make an attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable, a duty that Obama and most of the other candidates, like their lily-livered colleagues among the Congressional leadership, regularly shirk.
