“He’s Like a King”
I once shook a dictator’s hand.
Flying from Bangkok to Cambodia about 15 years ago for a consultancy, I ended up seated in the plane’s front row. A well-attired man boarded with his wife and large entourage, and sat across the aisle from me. He was the country’s autocratic prime minister, Hun Sen.
As we stood up and our eyes met after landing, he spontaneously shook my hand, said “Welcome to Cambodia” and turned to go. The Thai Airways flight attendant, unaware that I knew who he was, politely told me to wait until he and his scurrying travel party disembarked, because “he’s like a king.”
Which brings me to the point of this post: For all of the ways in that small Southeast Asian nation differs from America, we can learn from its brave democratic forces’ failure to topple Hun Sen when they possibly had him on the ropes several years later. In the coming days, Congress must bar Donald Trump from ever holding public office again.
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