“Twenty years ago this month, the first President Bush refused to condemn China’s communist rulers when they unleashed a violent assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. For weeks Bush had refrained from encouraging the student-led reform movement that had blossomed around the country. ‘Clearly we support democracy,’ he said, adding that it wouldn’t be appropriate for an American president to endorse the protesters’ pleas for more freedom. ‘Exactly what their course of action should be,’ he demurred, ‘is for them to determine.’ … In reacting to the recent Iranian election and to the protests that erupted after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the runaway victor, the Obama White House seems to be taking a page from the elder Bush’s 1989 playbook.” (06/17/09)