The Pleasure of Having a Comedian for President

Before he was elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian who portrayed the president on a popular television program, "Servant of the People." When his film company became a political party in 2019 -- five years after Putin's "little green men" had seized Crimea and launched a low-level war in eastern Ukraine -- he was elected for real with 73 percent of the vote. He was himself from a Russian-speaking Jewish family, but in February 2022 he became the 21st century version of Winston Churchill, standing tall and eloquent in combat fatigues against the 21st century version of Adolf Hitler.

But he hasn't lost the comedian's touch. On May 8 (the actual date that Hitler's Germany surrendered to the Allies) Zelensky issued the following proclamation:

"I hereby decree: 1. To authorize the holding of a parade in Moscow (Russian Federation) on May 9, 2026."

We Americans have something of a comic in the White House, but he never seems actually to be having fun with the job.