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And then there were questions about Nigeria: questions raised not by Jesse Helms or by Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., but by Nigerian exiles and immigrants living in Chicago. Those Nigerians were shocked to learn that Moseley-Braun's fiancé and campaign manager was on Abacha's payroll as a lobbyist, trying to persuade the United States to ease economic sanctions imposed after the international outcry at Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995. And they were incredulous when Moseley-Braun herself began speaking out on Abacha's behalf.

If any country was an appropriate target for U.S. economic sanctions, it was Nigeria in the mid-'90s. The State Department's human-rights report repeatedly called Nigeria's record "dismal." Vast oil revenues were sucked straight to the Swiss bank accounts of Abacha and his cronies: Between 1980 and 1995, average annual income in Nigeria declined from about $1,000 per person to $260, despite massive international oil sales.

Yet in May 1996, Moseley-Braun appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee to complain that economic sanctions universally supported by Nigerian dissidents, human-rights lobbyists and the Congressional Black Caucus would amount to "second class world citizenship for Nigeria."

"I am testifying on behalf of democracy in Nigeria," she declared -- even though in seven trips there she never met with beleaguered democracy activists like Saro-Wiwa, who might still be alive if a U.S. senator had ever ratified his existence.

In a speech later that year, she went so far as say that compared with the rest of Africa, complaining about Nigerian abuses is like "opening the refrigerator, seeing an elephant and complaining that a jar of jam is missing."

The pot finally boiled over in August 1996. That month, Moseley-Braun and Matthews paid a social visit to Abacha. Newsweek and Nigerian national radio both reported that Moseley-Braun chatted amiably with the colonel who executed Saro-Wiwa -- a report Moseley-Braun denied in her testimony last week.

Incontestable, however, was the fact that she made the trip without notifying the White House, the State Department or even her own chief of staff, who resigned in protest. Abacha used the occasion to present a letter endorsing President Clinton's re-election, an immense embarrassment to the White House. When George Will wrote a column criticizing the trip, Moseley-Braun exploded: Will "can just take his hood and go back wherever he came from." Braun apologized, but the damage to her own credibility from that Nigeria trip was, more than any other factor, responsible for her re-election defeat.

All politicians make mistakes, but when Sen. Coverdell offered Moseley-Braun "a chance to cleanse that whole question of Nigerian travel" she showed little evidence of either rethinking or honest self-assessment. When Coverdell asked her to "agree or disagree" with the Congressional Black Caucus and State Department's criticisms of her trip, she changed the subject.

"At no time have I taken a position or taken any action that was in any way contradictory or in any way contravened U.S. policy," she repeated twice -- even though the whole thrust of her 1996 statements was to condemn U.S. sanctions on the Abacha regime.

This would-be diplomat alternately declared her trips "private" affairs and compared them to other senators' attempts to "maintain conversations" with nations under sanction like Cuba. And most incredibly of all, she claimed that her sycophantic visits to the now-deceased Abacha might have helped move Nigeria "down the [democratic] path upon which it is now embarked."

Would any other ambassadorial nominee -- even a former senator -- get the same free ride from Democrats who pride themselves on their human-rights records? The Moseley-Braun nomination is a particularly bitter spectacle because she was elected to the Senate in 1992 in the backlash against the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. But just as the Bush administration's cynical playing of the race card in 1992 left senators fearful of opposing the unqualified and deceptive Thomas, so Democrats' gushing enthusiasm for Carol Moseley-Braun cynically obscures just as questionable a record of dissembling testimony and dubious alliances.

For the White House to appoint Moseley-Braun as U.S. ambassador to a society as committed to global citizenship as New Zealand shows either an exquisite sense of irony or a hopelessly tin ear for the politics of a critical region. And comparing Moseley-Braun's head-spinning testimony with the reality of her record on Nigeria, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that she is still an international incident waiting to happen.

The Democrats have Jesse Helms' wild, odious racism to thank for delivering a nomination that otherwise would have deservedly stalled. But the fact remains that Carol Moseley-Braun's free ride to an ambassadorship is almost as much of a global embarrassment as Sen. Helms himself.
salon.com | Nov. 9, 1999

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