Pop Quiz on History and Current Events

Gentle readers, please answer the following:

Which European head of government led his/her country for over a decade without ever winning a popular majority in an election?
A. Adolf Hitler
B. Margaret Thatcher

The answer, of course, is B. Thatcher's Conservative Party won several general elections, but with a plurality, not a majority, of the vote.

Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany with a majority vote. Once. That's all it took.

We urge gentle readers to remember this in assessing the Honduran military's forcible removal of its democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya, a protege of Hugo Chavez who like his mentor was seeking to guarantee the perpetuity of his presidency by extraconstitutional means. For details we recommend the acute observer of the Western Hemisphere, Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the WSJ.

It's worth remembering that many in our own Republic's early years feared that one Presidential election would be all that was required to return the Republic to a despotic monarchy and tyrranical majority. It is a tribute to the character of that first great POTUS that the untested constitution proved more enduring than his personal authority.

We also suggest that our present POTUS remember that there is only one power in this hemisphere able to provide a counterweight to adverturers like Chavez, his proteges and his aged mentor Mr. Castro, and that elections--in the Weimar Republic, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Bolivaran Republic of Venezuela, or even humble Honduras, are not all that comprise a genuinely democratic government.