After Bhutto

It has taken less than a week for the tragedy of Benazir Bhutto's assassination to segue into the farce of a potentially disastrous dynastic succession. The slain former prime minister, a woman of enormous strengths and flaws, certainly had the legitimacy to be Pakistan's preeminent opposition leader. Her successors, a notoriously corrupt husband and a sheltered 19-year-old son, do not. Neither is qualified to lead a nuclear-armed nation of 165 million citizens, many of them understandably angry and demoralized.

January 2, 2008