Johnnie Carson, a distinguished career diplomat just days into his new assignment, as Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, is making his first trip to the continent. After pressing the flesh at Jacob Zuma's inauguration over the weekend in South Africa, Carson spoke to reporters in Nairobi yesterday and expressed words of concern about the growing political tensions here.

Actually there was one word in particular: concern. By my count, Carson used it at least 10 times in 20 minutes to describe the cracks in Kenya's coalition government barely a year after the terrible post-election violence:

"We have concerns about the status of the coalition"...

"We're deeply concerned and worried whether the events of the past several weeks were a prelude to another round of instability"...

"We're concerned about where the politics may be going"...

"We came here not to threaten but to warn a friend about a deep concern, and to express that concern in very clear and precise ways."

OK, Carson got his message across. The Obama administration is watching Kenya closely. But what "clear and precise" ways did he use? Or, as one reporter put it, how would concern translate into American ”muscle" if -- as we all now expect -- Kenya's politicians don't stop acting like greedy children?

Carson wouldn't play along. But he reminded the room that Kenya hosts Africa's largest U.S. diplomatic mission and that the Obama administration regards Kenya as "the keystone state" in the region. (I don't know, but that might have been intended for Ethiopia, whose well-documented willingness to do the Bush administration's dirty work on counterterrorism won it some time in the sun, and perhaps now that time is up.)

During the post-election violence, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that Kenya and the U.S. couldn't do "business as usual" if the unrest continued. It was never clear what that meant, but 10 days later we had a shaky peace agreement and the threats ended. Kenyan leaders love to proclaim ties to Obama. At the same time, they're busy jockeying for position in the next election, in 2012, while the country goes hungry and the wounds from the last election have failed to heal.

We'll see if the tough early rhetoric from the Obama administration can succeed in shaming Kenya's shameless political elite. Surely, Carson, with a long and respected record of service in Africa, is a good choice for the job. But his closing words were the most discomfiting of all for Kenyans long accustomed to their leaders screwing them over.

"The United States is a large and powerful nation, but it has no capacity to rescue Kenya," Carson said. "Kenyans must in fact rescue themselves."

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