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President Hamid Karzai had rejected a runoff vote in Afghanistan's election only hours before he agreed to it, Nick Schifrin reported from Kabul for ABC. He changed his mind "only after he and Sen John Kerry took a walk and visited a mosque," Schifrin stated obliquely. The vote, pitting Karzai against former colleague Abdullah Abdullah, will be held at the end of the first week of November yet Schifrin found few locals impressed: "Most Afghans will tell you they think Karzai will remain in power no matter what the United States does and most people are resigned to the fact that their government will remain corrupt." Also filing from Kabul, CBS' Mandy Clark warned about insecure polling precincts, continued fraud and early snows: "Elections here require massive logistics. Even the donkeys that carried voting materials to remote places in August will not be able to reach the same places, some of which are already being cut off by winter weather."
Back in New York City, ABC anchor Charles Gibson asked correspondent Martha Raddatz whether the mere fact that a runoff is scheduled will allow Barack Obama to assert that "we have a legitimate government that we are backing now." See how minimal Raddatz' definition of legitimate is, despite what her colleague Schifrin had just reported: "That is exactly what he can say."
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