Dear Mr Obama -- what if Bush won't go?

Dear Mr Obama,

While the rest of the world celebrates your election victory, I worry about the future of your great country. Not because I question your ability to perform, but because everybody, everywhere, is overlooking an enormous and obvious threat to your presidency.

What happens if George won’t go?

It’s happened before, you know, very recently, right next door to us here in South Africa. Eight months after our dapper ex-president’s sartorially talented but buffoonish best pal Bob Mugabe lost power at the polls, the little dictator still sits smugly in office while his accomplices south of the border (and north, come to that) await Nobel Peace Prizes because they occasionally get him to pick up the telephone and tell them more lies.

I see in the newspapers that Bob’s supporters yesterday clashed with those of Zimbabwe’s disallowed president elect, Morgan Tsvangirai, over the division of the spoils. This all happened after our own government decided that election results can cheerfully be ignored, as long as both parties agree on “power sharing” and stay friends afterwards. Our president, Kgalema Motlanthe – described in The Times as “tough talking” – slated both Mugabe and Tsvangirai for “political immaturity.”

That surely makes life difficult for you. What if Condoleezza Rice emulates the Mugabe thug who told the paper “They want Mugabe to step down, but Tsvangirai can’t just come and take Zimbabwe … we fought for this country. They will not get the Department of Home Affairs neither Defence — that belongs to the Zanu-PF.”?

This revolutionary new approach to democracy rather ties your hands, doesn’t it? If George declines to vacate the Oval Office and Laura won’t let Michelle into the White House to measure for new curtains, what can you do about it without being labelled “politically immature?” Start negotiating, with one of George’s mates – say Tony Blair — acting as go-between? What state departments can you lay claim to without being told to “grow up”? Can you afford to leave George with control of the FBI and the CIA, or should you insist on owning at least one of them? Will you have to settle for a bachelor flat in downtown Washington for your company housing?

Of course this is unlikely to happen in the USA. Bob only gets away with it because of all those racists, black and white, who say “Ag shame – Zimbabwe’s in Africa. We’d better cut them a little slack and let them sort themselves out. But George is white and American, so we expect better from him.”

Don’t we?