Worthwhile reading from the chair of the Princeton politics department in the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only):

Why do President Bush’s many domestic and foreign critics ignore his Africa initiative? They do so because it clashes with their mantra concerning the Bush administration’s supposed lack of interest in foreign affairs outside of the war on terror. It would, quite simply, produce too much cognitive dissonance….More cynically, critics of the Bush administration cannot afford to recognize current progress in Africa policy. For Democrats, an absolutely critical priority is to hold on to the African-American vote, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. Any effort by the Bush administration to adopt policies that might appeal to African Americans has to be strenuously denied by the Democrats because even mild Republican inroads into such a core constituency would swing some elections toward President Bush’s party. Analogously, the French and some other countries have defined much of their foreign policy as being opposed to American unilateralism and, sometimes, to whatever initiative Washington undertakes. Giving full credit to the Bush administration for its Africa policies would so undermine the appeal of opposing America that it is almost an imperative that the current Africa initiatives be ignored.