We hear that President Obama will catch an exhibition game in Havana. The Tampa Bay Rays will visit the island during the president’s visit. President Obama’s trip is caught up in the middle of a dissident controversy.
The trip will have serious consequences, specially for the future of the US-Cuba relationship.
So let’s be clear: Notwithstanding Mr. Obama’s expectation that Cuba will “be fun,” his visit will be an ignoble failure if he does not have a meaningful encounter with the island’s most important human rights activists.The risk of such an outcome seems to be rising. Administration officials who said Mr. Obama would choose whom he met when he is on the island are now conceding that Cuban officials are trying to prevent him from seeing true opposition leaders. Instead they are proposing that Mr. Obama gather with regime-approved members of “civil society,” perhaps with a couple of moderate government critics mixed in. The disagreement reportedly contributed to a decision by Secretary of State John F. Kerry to cancel a preparatory trip to Havana last week.
We will watch and hope for the best.
In the meantime, I hope that someone else in the Obama delegation throws the first at the game.
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