Our only curse is 'smallness of politics'

"What is troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our national challenges and the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we are destructed by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem."

The expression of frustration by US President Barack Obama in his memoirs, The Audacity of Hope reads like a perfect diagnosis of the curse eating up Kenya and which stunts our desired growth and progress. In fact, from the diagnosis, the only prognosis is that we shall not progress an inch unless we initiate and execute a national surgery to cure our maddening mediocrity, obsession with trivia, and our penchant for self-destruction.