Hugo Chávez Watch IV

I’ve been remiss in listing the past couple of mentions by presidential candidates of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Senator Barack Obama mentioned Chávez in an interview with a Venezuelan reporter for La Opinión this past weekend. He reiterated his willingness to talk to Chávez.

Governor Bill Richardson, in yesterday’s Latin America policy address, was the first candidate to refer to Chávez as something more than a straw man or a political bludgeon with which to beat one’s opponents. Richardson laid out a substantive position in some detail:

We need to take leaders like Chavez seriously, not because they are truthful — they are not. We need to take them seriously because they are tapping into real resentment against us, and then amplifying it for their own purposes. Across the world, the Bush foreign policy has intensified anti-Americanism and played into the hands of our worst enemies.

The Bush administration’s short-sighted, clumsy diplomacy has helped leaders like Chávez and Castro create an axis of anti-American nationalism across the region. With the benefit of Venezuela’s oil wealth, Chávez has forged ties with leaders such as Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. These four countries — Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua — have formed a trade agreement that seeks to exclude and undermine US influence in Latin America. Chávez is reaching out to long-standing US partners such as Argentina. His trade and economic development proposals are filling the void left by our bankrupt leadership in the region. In recent years, Venezuela has purchased more than $5 billion worth of Argentine government bonds and other debt relief instruments. A few months ago, Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner met with Chávez and Evo Morales in Bolivia, where progress was made on a deal to ship more than $15 billion worth of Bolivian natural gas to Argentina.

The Chávez method of “checkbook diplomacy” extends to the aid he provided to Peru following that country’s catastrophic earthquake in August. Hundreds of people were killed … thousands more displaced. The nation looked to the US for help. And yet, it was Venezuela that responded with more aid than the Bush administration.

We handed Chávez yet another public relations coup in the region.

I focus on Hugo Chávez not because he is the disease in Latin America, but because he is yet another symptom. The disease is arrogance.
Hugo Chavez
richardson

Hugo Chávez Watch III

Looks like keeping up with all the Hugo Chávez mentions by presidential candidates may become a part-time job.

From NBC/National Journal’s Matthew E. Berger

Giuliani went after Obama Tuesday, criticizing Obama’s plans to meet with the leaders of rogue nations without preconditions. Giuliani, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, took issue with Obama’s claims that meeting with leaders like Hugo Chavez is akin to Ronald Reagan’s meetings with the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

I´ll update with the actual Giuliani quote mentioning Chávez as soon as I see it.

Update

Giuiliani’s Press Office just sent out excerpts from his comments earlier today before the Republican Jewish Coalition.

When Barack Obama, a couple of months ago, said that he would invite Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro and Chavez — did I miss somebody — to Washington in the first year that he’s in office to meet with them, without preconditions, when he was condemned by Hillary Clinton, who now has joined his position, but that was the one of the longest positions she’s held, by the way. She held that one for two months.

Update Number 2

From NBC’s Mark Murray
Lots of campaign rebuttals out there to comments rivals made today…
– To Giuliani saying that Obama is “not Ronald Reagan” for wanting meet with unsavory world leaders like Hugo Chavez, Obama spokesman Bill Burton told First Read: “While Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton do not think we should engage in the type of strong diplomacy practiced by Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, Obama does. And given the hefty fee that Hugo Chavez’s oil company paid Rudy Giuliani’s firm, he apparently thinks we shouldn’t talk to Chavez, but it’s fine to take his money.”

Update Number 3

From NYT’s The Caucus 

Other speakers villified Mr. Putin. Sam Brownback even rattled off the Russian’s name in a list of troublesome world leaders after Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

 

Hugo Chavez
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Hugo Chávez Watch

Senator John McCain writes in a Foreign Affairs article :

We must also work together to counter the propaganda of demagogues who threaten the security and prosperity of the Americas. Hugo Chávez has overseen the dismantling of Venezuela’s democracy by undermining the parliament, the judiciary, the media, free labor unions, and private enterprises. His regime is acquiring advanced military equipment. And it is trying to build a global anti-American axis.

The Arizona Senator now has two mentions of Hugo Chávez this week alone. See the earlier mention here.

I thought also of including in the tally this exchange between Harry Smith and Senator Barack Obama

SMITH: “She came after you a couple months ago. You said I will talk to so and so, and Hugo Chavez etcetera, etcetera–”

OBAMA: “Exactly, without preconditions.”

Except that Senator Obama is only responding to a question. Not the same as Senator McCain´s deliberate mentions. Perhaps I will include it with an asterisk.

Hugo Chavez