Reuters reports that today Barack Obama weighed in on the Kenya crisis:

“Despite irregularities in the vote tabulation, now is not the time to throw that strong democracy away,” Obama said, one day before a contest in Iowa launches the state-by-state nominating contests in the 2008 White House race.

“Now is a time for President Kibaki, opposition leader Odinga, and all of Kenya’s leaders to call for calm, to come together, and to start a political process to address peacefully the controversies that divide them,” Obama said.

“Now is the time for this terrible violence to end.”

Obama strikes me as a politician who can keep things in perspective. I most admire this passage from his recent book, Audacity of Hope:

When democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal.

Unfortunately, it seems that Kenya may in fact be facing its darkest hour. While this may help put USD elections into perspective, it does no favors for Kenyans today.