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...Dalai Lama is Public Enemy No. 1 for, they claim, fomenting Tibetan separatism. Until very recently, the Beijing view of Taiwan was just as jaundiced and one-dimensional: a renegade province led and populated by disloyal subjects bent on denying China's Party-given right to rule them. Put the two together and you have the mainland's worst "splittist" nightmare. As the Dalai Lama sat down with all the island's then top political figures, Beijing practically tossed every invective across the narrow Strait of Taiwan short of declaring war. (Read "Why Taiwan's President Allowed the Dalai Lama...
...territories to Chinese sovereignty. Taiwan is different. Since 1987, when the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) lifted martial law, the island has gradually become a thriving, if somewhat rambunctious, democracy. Its 23 million people determine its future, not Beijing or London or Lisbon. A sizeable portion of the population - some estimates put it at as high as a third - opposes Ma's overtures to China. It's this constituency that nurtures former President Chen's pro-independence opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Even those who favor eventual unification with China embrace a strong sense of Taiwan identity. (Read "China and Taiwan Draw...
...Take the Dalai Lama episode. The opposition DPP invited him to Taiwan in order to put Ma in a spot - he'd be damned by his own people as a mainland lackey if he did not okay the visit and condemned by Beijing if he did. Ma took a gamble: he approved the trip - and bet on China's leaders appreciating his dilemma. They did. Their censure was directed solely at the DPP, with no mention of Ma whatsoever. Far from harming cross-strait relations, the Dalai Lama's visit revealed how mature those relations have become...
...other hand, the evidence of the last 200 years or so would suggest that the U.S. political system has not served its nation badly. As David Brooks of the New York Times argued recently, "the founders created a government that was cautious so that society might be dynamic." Put it this way: Any constitutional structure that throws up a lawmaker like Ted Kennedy ain't too shabby...
...busy, most retired politicians are too frail, and most losing candidates are too forgotten. That pretty much narrows it down to someone whose political career was cut short after a big scandal and - since the show's core audience is older women - preferably one that didn't involve infidelity. (Put the tux back in storage, John Edwards...