Only one argument is offered against President Obama's decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba - that the Cuban government is tyrannical.

As the State Department's travel guide puts it, "Cuba is an authoritarian state that routinely employs repressive methods against internal dissent and monitors and responds to perceived threats to authority. These methods may include physical and electronic surveillance, as well as detention and interrogation of both Cuban citizens and foreign visitors."

But of course the same could be said about China, Syria, Belarus, Zimbabwe, and many other countries with which the United States long has maintained diplomatic relations without objection at home. The half-century diplomatic break and economic embargo by the United States against Cuba are unique in this country's history, undertaken in the name of overthrowing the regime, an objective the United States pursued militarily in 1961.

This policy of isolation has failed, as most of the world recognizes the Cuban government, since, like it or not, the government governs. Worse, this policy of isolation has conferred legitimacy on the Cuban regime as the defender of the country's sovereignty.

So why can the United States recognize and conduct commerce with totalitarian states all over the world and not with Cuba? It's not because the U.S. national interest requires boycotting Cuba. It's only because resentful refugees from Cuba heavily influence presidential elections in a decisive swing state, Florida.

Of course that's why President Obama has changed U.S. policy only now that he will not again be seeking Florida's electoral votes and because the final congressional elections of his presidency are out of the way by a few weeks.

Normalizing relations with Cuba won't necessarily overthrow the regime. But normalizing relations with the communist regime in China, which began in 1972, has moderated the regime's behavior and liberalized the country's political conditions. Since Cuba is so much closer to the United States, normal relations inevitably will invite Cubans to compare their political and economic circumstances with those of their big neighbor and likely foment more agitation for change.

Indeed, if Congress will legislate an end to the U.S. embargo, big U.S. corporations will pounce on Cuba, and it will be a rare Cuban totalitarian who will be able to resist those opportunities for corruption and a rare Cuban proletarian who won't figure that almost any different economic arrangements would be an improvement.

After five years of normal relations and economic and cultural absorption, Cuba may apply for statehood.

Disengaged citizens

How can you tell that Indiana's Republican governor, Mike Pence, is considering running for president?

He's pandering in the most tedious way.

"There's a lot wrong with our national government but there's not a lot wrong with our nation," Pence told the Washington Post this month. "We've just got to have a government as good as our people."

You know - the people, nearly half of whom get government transfer payments, a third of whom don't even register to vote, half of whom don't even vote in presidential elections, and most of whom, as long as there is no military draft and no special tax, let their government wage stupid imperial wars not meant to be won.

"A government as good as its people" was Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign theme in 1976.

The country has been there, done that, and got the "malaise" it deserved from believing, along with that hapless president, that for good things to happen, people need only to think themselves good.

What's wrong with the government is precisely that the people, corrupted by prosperity, are not as good as they used to be, that they are losing their civic virtue and engagement, their basic patriotism.