Nairobi, May 7 -- Kenya, like many others, has a recurring fever it treats every five years with the same medicine that has never once worked. The patient, credulous and long-suffering and magnificent in his persistence, returns faithfully to the same pharmacy, hands over the same coins, and carries home the same useless remedy in a bottle with a different label. The fever breaks briefly. Then it returns. Moi exits, Kibaki arrives; Kibaki exits, Uhuru arrives; Uhuru exits, Ruto arrives, carrying a wheelbarrow as proof that this time, the medicine is different. It is not. The pharmacist is merely wearing a new coat.

In 2002, the country rose as one to remove Daniel arap Moi after twenty-four years of baroque misrule, and the morning after...