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...America. Her Sunday setback "indicates that Latin America's hyperpresidentialist project, which was fueled by the economic boom, faces walls and obstacles now," says Javier Corrales, a Latin America expert who teaches political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Another factor is the exit of U.S. President George W. Bush, whose own bid for excessive presidential power wasn't exactly seen by Latin Americans as a model of democratic checks and balances. Today, the more collegial Obama presidency makes hyperpresidencies look less seemly. (See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree...
...Barack Obama found himself spiritually isolated upon entering the Oval Office. He famously broke ties last year with Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, and resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. So, just as he followed Bush's lead in choosing Evergreen as a church home, the President is taking a page from Clinton's playbook on this front: Obama has a small group of pastors he contacts for prayer and spiritual support (including two men who played the same role at times for Bush...
Those two, Kirbyjon Caldwell and T.D. Jakes, are both African-American ministers from Texas. Caldwell offered a prayer at Bush's first inauguration and in 2008 he officiated at Jenna Bush's wedding. By that point, he was an Obama supporter, even launching the website JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com last summer when the Focus on the Family leader accused Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview." Obama chose Jakes to preach the sermon at a private prayer service the morning of his inauguration and reached out to him to pray by phone on other occasions...
...aborted military coup in 1992, before he was elected Venezuela's President in 1998. But Obama needs to remember how sorely the memory of a failed 2002 coup attempt against Chávez still lingers in Latin America - and how convinced the region remains (not without reason) that the Bush Administration backed it. As a result, Obama may find that while he'd like to be the voice of dialogue, Latin leaders of all political stripes are likely to exhort him to come down hard on what Zelaya called the "kidnapping" of a democratically elected President. (Read about U.S. gang...
...more reason Obama has to play the Honduran crisis smartly. His call against "outside interference," to respect national sovereignty in ways Latin America felt the Bush Administration too often ignored, is particularly savvy. In fact, because Obama has been so measured in his response to Iran, Tehran's allies in Latin America, including Chávez, have had trouble gaining anti-Yanqui traction over that crisis. "Latin America's leftist governments have all been waiting for Obama to blow his cool, but it's not happening," says Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "It throws...