Thursday, January 22, 2009

Chávez, Bush and Obama

Francisco Toro writes about Hugo Chávez at The Huffington Post, arguing that he will treat Obama and Bush essentially the same:

It's just pathetic...and it's hard to overstate how badly Chavez is misreading the international mood surrounding President Obama's inauguration, how naive his attempt is to transition straight from Bush-whackery to a primitive brand of Obama-baiting that treats the two as basically interchangeable.

The issue of "international mood" struck me, because I just saw this article about Cristina Fernández and Fidel Castro:

She said Castro was impressed with Obama's inauguration ceremony and said he thought the new U.S. president was a ''sincere man'' with ``good ideas.''

Not only is Fidel not insulting Obama, he is actually praising him.

Ultimately, though, Chávez needs the votes of Venezuelans, and so what matters most is not international mood, but domestic.

4 comments:

boz 6:47 AM  

Didn't mean to write the same post as you at the same time :)

Anonymous,  10:48 AM  

I am betting that Obama will meet with the Castros within a year. Hearing Fidel praise Obama is difficult to explain unless there is something brewing behind the scenes. Maybe he travels to Guantanamo to shut it down and in the same trip meets with Fidel and Raul. Think of the international press frenzy surrounding those two tidbits.

Justin Delacour 10:36 PM  

Francisco Toro is a rich kid with an axe to grind.

Until the little tiff over Obama's FARC-baiting on Univision, all I had been seeing from Chavez is a wait-and-see attitude, punctuated by repeated offers to meet with Obama. One wonders why Obama would still be FARC-baiting Chavez long after Venezuela and Colombia had set that dispute aside, and in spite of the fact that there is no established evidence.

I always find it a little strange that a so-called scholar who likes to feign the maverick role is prone to being manipulated by spin doctors like Boz and Francisco Toro.

Anonymous,  5:36 AM  

thanks for the information....

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