Word: ch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Chávez, who draws political oxygen from confrontation with the U.S., reacted to Obama's charge by suggesting that the new U.S. leader has the "same stench" as Bush (whom Chávez accused of backing a failed 2002 coup against him). But anyone who has ever sat down with Chávez knows he's a more reasonable personality one-on-one than he is with a microphone in front of 50,000 people. As a result, say Chávez supporters, Obama should rely on the more dialogue-oriented foreign policy he promised in dealing with Ch...
...Since then, of course, U.S.-Venezuela relations have plummeted farther than a Lake Maracaibo oil drill. Both sides share the blame. But the 1999 phone call bears significance. If anything, Chávez has lately supplanted Castro as Washington's priority regional pariah, yet he celebrated a decade in power this month by winning a democratic referendum that scraps presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election for as long as he chooses to. (See pictures of people around the world watching Barack Obama's Inauguration...
...Chávez isn't going anywhere, just as Castro didn't despite almost five decades of U.S. efforts to isolate him. That fact alone should prompt President Obama to break with the failed policies of his predecessors and meet with Chávez ahead of April's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. (First item: reinstating each other's ambassadors, who were expelled from Washington and Caracas last year after Chávez accused the U.S. envoy of conspiring against him.) Talking to Chávez is not a popular idea in Washington, given the Venezuelan leader's strident...
...thing, it's a good idea for the U.S. to have a better rapport with one of its major oil suppliers. Chávez, who said last weekend he's willing to meet with Obama, likewise seems to realize that his favorite Yanqui enemy, George W. Bush, is gone, and that a new relationship might be possible with his major oil customer. And as the Castro example demonstrates, it's hard to isolate a Latin American head of state when the rest of Latin America doesn't sign on - and most nations in the region are not willing to freeze...
...admit it, the more moderate Latin leftists who dominate the region's politics today - including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom Obama has invited to the White House in March - know that their own electoral paths were opened in no small part by Chávez's victory in 1998. So it should have come as no surprise that many Latin American Presidents took issue with Obama's suggestion, in a Univision interview last month, that the Venezuelan leader aids terrorists. After all, last summer Chávez all but disowned Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas...