Learning from Liberia?

OK, just for the sake of full disclosure, I was in fact born in Monrovia, Liberia. But my parents left that country when I was a few months old, so I doubt that said accident of birth colors the present post. Last week Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf made history when she became the first woman to win a presidential election in Africa. Africa, a continent where democracies are difficult to get started and even more so to maintain (Liberia being a particularly good example); and yet, they elected a (black, obviously) woman for president. The United States, on the other hand, despite being the self-described best democracy in the world, hasn't even had a woman as vice-president!

Indeed, at the moment the possibility of a woman winning the US presidency is so remote that it is being portrayed only on television, as fiction, in the series Commander in Chief. Interestingly, the main character in the series becomes president by accident, because of the untimely death of the elected president. Not even ABC can conceive of something like this happening naturally, as a result of a straightforward electoral win (yes, I do realize that the plot is more dramatic this way, but still...).

Back to Liberia. Another thing we can learn from the recent elections there is that Johnson-Sirleaf (an academic intellectual!) won by defeating none other than George Weah! George who? Weah is an international soccer star, which means a lot to most people outside the US. It's like electing, hmm, Ronald Regan, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, putting somebody in office because he is famous rather than, say, qualified?

Who would have thought just a few month ago that the oldest continuous democracy in the world could learn a thing or two from the most recent democracy to appear on the planet.