The Real Diehl - Competing With Chavez

Jackson Diehl has a must read piece in today's WaPost. He talks about Chavez buying friends in Latin America and appealing to the populist anti-American sentiment that has never really gone away. He also mentions our friends Presidents Toledo and Uribe. Both of them head governments that have successfully nurtured growth. True Toledo is reviled but Uribe according to a recent poll is admired at home and abroad (albeit among the elites). Diehl mentions their prescription for beating Chavez and I will add something else be a geo-green or even a neo-con. Here's Diehl:

That's why when Uribe and Toledo did speak about Venezuela, to their contacts in Congress and the Bush administration, the message was a simple one: Stop talking about Chavez, and start competing with him. Chavez-bashing, whether by Pat Robertson or Donald Rumsfeld, only sends his poll numbers soaring; meanwhile, say the Latin presidents, hard-pressed leaders are wondering if Washington has anything that matches Chavez's largesse. The opportunities to compete are readily available. There is, for example, an Andean free-trade agreement with the United States that the two presidents would like to wrap up by the end of October.

Their pitch would be more convincing if they were willing to stand up against Chavez's breach of democratic norms and interference in other countries, both violations of regional charters. But they also have a point: The Bush administration would have a lot more impact if it behaved as if the United States, rather than Venezuela, was the hemisphere's economic leader.