“Sham” and “Farce” in Nicaragua?

Long before the election took place in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration dismissed it as “sham” and “Soviet style.” After the election took place on November 4, 1984, President Reagan pronounced it a “farce.” To anyone familiar with the kind of electoral exercises conducted regularly in the Soviet bloc, so unsparing a judgment seems odd. To my knowledge, the Communist party of the Soviet Union has never failed to obtain less than a 98 percent electoral &...