South Africans have been singing and dancing in celebration of the life lived by Nelson Mandela. Today a stadium built for the World Cup was full of people attending the memorial service for Mandela. They stayed there even though it was pouring. President Obama delivered a 15 minute long eulogy.
This was the backdrop for something that set the right drooling. President Obama shook hands with Cuba's leader Raul Castro.
There's debate over any implied meaning to this handshake. There's debate over the appropriateness of the handshake.
Senator John McCain compared it to shaking hands with Hitler. As Jon Stewart said, Raul Castro isn't Hitler, he's not even Fidel Castro.
Rush Limbaugh is still using the "to distract from Obamacare" reasoning for everything the President does, including this.
But for now, and until anything else us announced, it's a polite gesture between heads of state who are in the same place to pay tribute to another leader. It's not a shift in policy or a call to befriend Cuba.
And isn't this handshake the kind of thing Mandela, a man who knew the value of peace and diplomacy, would have approved of?
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