Bush: Russia Doesn't Have the DNA for Democracy

It is a sad day, when one must, at last, come to grips with the fact that President Bush is a dangerous fool...at least on the issue of Russian democracy. Kudos to the WashPost editorial board:

"IT WAS DAMAGING enough when President Bush misread Russian President Vladimir Putin early in his administration and then for years refused to acknowledge Russia's downward spiral toward authoritarianism. Now, rather than admit error, Mr. Bush apparently has decided to blame the Russian people -- and in so doing he is undermining a central tenet of his presidency...

"But at a White House news conference Wednesday, Mr. Bush questioned "whether or not it's possible to reprogram the kind of basic Russian DNA, which is a centralized authority." In so doing, he echoed the laziest thinking of cultural determinists -- those who said that South Korea could never be democratic because of its Confucian culture, and were proved wrong; who said that Indonesia could never be democratic because of its Muslim faith, and were proved wrong; and who say today that Russia will never escape its czar-serf history."