2016 Jan 17^th

There is a song popular when I was in high school in 1944. It’s called “Accentuate the Positive.” The lyric by Johnny Mercer advises folks to “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don’t mess with Mr. In Between.” It was a great song and it might work as a theme for the Democratic National Convention; you will never hear it sung by the angry obstructionists at the Republican National Convention. The obstructionists are so busy pushing paranoia that I doubt they are interested in singing anything. Most all songs are upbeat, unless they’re songs about lost love, so it’s hard to imagine any singing at all at an RNC meeting.

We have some remarkable good news today; five of the people held by Iran have been released. It really seems that we may have turned to a new chapter with Iran, although there is still the issue of Iran’s lobbing missiles in the vicinity of our naval vessels. That is being addressed, but the larger issue is the combination of the release of our sailors who inadvertently violated Iran’s territorial waters and the release of these prisoners. All-in-all this has been a week with much to be thankful for… unless you are an obstructionist, in which case you complain about Iran’s holding of those prisoners in the first place. But then things do change and maybe there has been a shift in the political weather in Iran. Let’s hope so and let’s “Accentuate the Positive.”

A previous international diplomatic gambit has us opening better relations with Cuba. This is anathema to those Cubans who left Cuba just ahead of Fidel Castro’s followers who were intent on leveling the lopsided income distribution which was common under Fulgencio Baptista. Of course there are still problems in Cuba and those problems are mentioned as reasons against any change in our embargo. This “let’s embargo Cuba” policy had been in effect for some fifty years. The obstructionists, encouraged by Senator Rubio, claimed that these restrictive policies “were just now beginning to work” when President Obama decided to junk them. (What a bad President!)

Secretary Kerry, who had been working behind the scenes to get the release of the Iranian captives, and President Obama, can expect no credit for these diplomatic thaws. It strikes me that there is a parallel here with President Nixon’s and Secretary Kissinger’s trip to China. China then, and to a considerable extent China now, is hardly a country we would consider a role model encouraging freedom of expression and neither are Iran and Cuba. That didn’t matter when Nixon went there and acted to make nice and reduce tensions; why should the current administration’s efforts with Cuba and Iran be treated differently? Could it be the difference between a white Republican President and a black Democratic President?