Democracy isn’t microwaveable.

Nowadays, some foods are made especially for that wonderful miracle of late 20th Century technology—the microwave oven. They come in nice, neat, little packages, and all you have to do is pop them into the microwave for a relatively short time and whammo! Instant results. Everything is completely cooked, and no one had to deal with a horrendously long waiting period.

Well, that’s the way it works for a lot of things, but there are still foods that involve a lot of preparation, too. They have to be rolled and needed, or brought to a boil, or baked for a long time. That’s the way it has to be with some things. It’s the only way you can find out how good they really taste.

The word over in Eastern Europe lately is that some citizens of countries where democracy got its foot in the door barely a year ago are unhappy because a change in governmental form has not healed political and economic woes yet.

It’s true that in several of these countries unemployment rates and inflation are just as bad or worse than they were a year ago. But, it took America much longer than a year just to get democracy working pretty well, and when a country makes radical changes in governmental policies, things are liable to get worse before they get better.

Democracy might be bitter for Eastern Europe now, but once it’s done cooking, it’ll taste pretty good.