But as his presidency progressed, Zelaya veered to the left and was in constant conflict with business groups, lawmakers from his own party, the news media and the army.”Over the last year, Zelaya’s positions moved to the left. He pushed social programs and more attention for the poor who have no work,” said Giuseppe Magno, the outgoing Italian ambassador. “This switch was not in line with the program he was voted in on. He was too close to Ortega and Chávez, a position the middle and upper classes did not appreciate.” (more…)

Well, let’s begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone’s tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was an historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it’s historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would have been unthinkable. So something’s happened to the country in 40 years. And what’s happened to the country- which is we’re not supposed to mention- is that there was extensive and very constructive activism in the 1960s, which had an aftermath. So the feminist movement, mostly developed in the 70s-–the solidarity movements of the 80’s and on till today. And the activism did civilize the country. The country’s a lot more civilized than it was 40 years ago and the historic achievements illustrate it. That’s also a lesson for what’s next.

What’s next will depend on whether the same thing happens. Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what’s next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it. It’s not predictable. In some ways, the election—the election was surprising in some respects.

Going back to my bad prediction, If the financial crisis hadn’t taken place at the moment that it did, if it had been delayed a couple of months, I suspect that prediction would have been correct. But not speculating, one thing surprising about the election was that it wasn’t a landslide. By the usual criteria, you would expect the opposition party to win in a landslide under conditions like the ones that exist today. The incumbent president for eight years was so unpopular that his own party couldn’t mention his name and had to pretend to be opposing his policies. He presided over the worst record for ordinary people in post-war history, in terms of job growth, real wealth and so on. Just about everything the administration was touched just turned into a disaster. (more…)

Most politicians wait at least until they’ve been sworn in before they start breaking their campaign promises. In this sense, as in so many others, Barack Obama represents an entirely new phenomenon: the politician who preemptively reneges.

A recent Wall Street Journal piece describing the transition process as it relates to intelligence-gathering reveals we aren’t going to see much change in this vitally important realm, the one in which the Bush administration truly made its blackest mark. This will "create tension within the Democratic party," we are told, apparently because even the worst party hacks will have a hard time going along with the revised Obama Doctrine on the issue of torture.

According to the Journal, Obama’s advisors on intelligence matters are "centrists" in the Clinton mold and outright Republicans, who favor torture "with oversight." These, we are told, are the "pragmatists," likely candidates for position in Obama’s national security bureaucracy. "He’s going to take a very centrist approach to these issues," avers Roger Cressey, who served as a counter-terrorism official under Clinton as well as Bush II.

It’s a grotesque commentary on the moral health of the nation when advocacy of torture is considered "centrist." One shudders to imagine what it means to be right-of-center. (more…)