Hugo Chavez

There is an excellent blurb on Talking Points Memo Cafe (TPM Cafe)that deconstructs a recent Foreign Policy article on Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. While Chavez is not a saint, he is certainly not the Saddam Hussein of Latin America. In this article, all the Bush Administration complaints about Chavez are aired and, as outlined in the blurb, they are, as usual, way off.

In summary:
1. The article suggests Chavez is a dictator, this is almost completely false. The major media are controlled by the opposition and constantly spew anti Chavez propaganda. This doesn't happen in a dictatorship.

2. It suggests that Chavez has been keeping a database on the opposition. While George W. Bush has been keeping a database on Americans via the NSA, this has not happened in Venezuela.

3. It states that he has been in office "approaching a decade." It has been six, approaching seven, years.

4. It suggests that the poor do not support Chavez. This is just patent baloney. The poor support Chavez en masse.

Chavez' recent approval ratings have ranged from 65 to 77 percent.

5. It suggests that Chavez has failed to improve poverty in Venezuela. Again, just as in Cuba, there has been major improvement in nutrition, due to a food support program, and health care. The latter is a particularly galling issue to me since our State supported health care for the poor (Medicaid) is in tatters and only due to get worse after the recent vote in the Senate cutting support to Medicaid. Chavez also introduced a literacy program. This has, by any standard, been very successful. Instead of unfunded mandating of testing, as in "No Child Left Behind," it actually provided money for teaching. Yes, Mr. Bush, children in Venezuela is learning.

6. The article suggests that the audit of the recall election was flimsy. Actually,

...the Carter Center and the OAS did not simply "condone" an audit by the Venezuelan Electoral Council but were closely involved in the audit as observers and verified the results.

Of course the Carter Center is one of them "librul, pinky groups." The analysis of the article goes on to point out that the opposition party in Venezuela (the rich who have been deprived of all the oil revenues by Chavez) have actually boycotted elections rather than participate in them as in a true democracy. They boycott the elections because they invariably lose. The similarities to the situation in Iraq were not pointed out, but they are there.

7. Finally, the article accuses Chavez in meddling in the politics of his neighbors including Brazil. Interestingly enough, Chavez has good relations with Brazil. On the other hand, it is George Bush who supported the attempted coup d'etat against Chavez. Talk about meddling in the politics of a foreign country!

Hugo Chavez is not a saint. No man or woman is. But he, along with Fidel Castro, has improved the lot of a large number of desperately poor people. This has been at the expense of the very rich of Venezuela and they have the ear of the president of the United States. We have three more years of this man, unless the Democrats can take the House and Senate in 2006 and do a double impeachment: Bush and Cheney in 2006!

It is sad that the fate of Venezuela should rest in the hands of the American electorate.