redblueamerica.com

I'm as pleased as anyone that Fidel Castro has "resigned" from the presidency of Cuba, and I'll be even more pleased when the Castros are dead, communism is gone, and Cuba is free again. But the coverage of Castro's exit is driving me nuts.

In particular, most of the stories take pains to note how Castro "outlasted nine U.S. presidents." The BBC, which headlined its political obituary of Castro as a "Profile of a great survivor," mentions Castro's longevity in the story's second paragraph. New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, who frets about Cuba after Castro in the L.A. Times today, also invokes the nine presidents in his discussion of the dictator's longevity.

Well, of course Castro outlasted nine presidents. He was a tyrant who seized power by force. We have free elections here. Our presidents are subject to term limits under the Constitution. Castro never faced a real election in his life. His term limit was self-imposed. So boasting of Castro's longevity compared to that of America's presidents is comparing apples to bullets in the brain.

Every eight years or so, we hear dire prognostications of whether this president or that will suspend the Constitution, cancel elections, and hold onto office. It never happens. Not here. But in Cuba, it's happened for 49 years and counting.