Calling the Empire
With a tough election looming, Hugo Chávez grabs for Barack Obama's coattails.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

UNLIKE HIS close allies in Moscow, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez dispatched a cheerful message to Barack Obama after the election. Mr. Chávez, who expelled the U.S. ambassador from Caracas in September, offered a fresh start on relations with what he likes to call "the empire"; he even tried to take credit for the victory of Mr. Obama (whom he calls "the black man"). Maybe that's because Mr. Chávez faces his own crucial electoral test this month. With his own popularity sinking, and that of Mr. Obama soaring in Venezuela and around Latin America, the populist caudillo needs all the help he can get.

Mr. Chávez has already done quite a lot to help himself. The Nov. 23 elections are for 23 state governors and hundreds of legislative and mayoral posts, and earlier this year polls showed that opposition candidates could sweep the most important races, including the governorships of greater Caracas and surrounding Miranda state. Mr. Chávez responded by borrowing a tactic from Iran, another close ally. His administration banned more than 300 candidates, including Leopoldo López, an opposition mayor with a national following who was heavily favored in Caracas. The exclusion blatantly violated Venezuela's constitution and the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States, which say that candidates cannot be barred from elections unless they are convicted of crimes. But the sanction was rubber-stamped by Mr. Chávez's Supreme Court, which he packed with his followers several years ago.

State-controlled media have been promoting Mr. Chávez's nominees for months, and the government has spent tens of billions of dollars to restock empty store shelves with imported goods. Yet the opposition is still favored to win at least four states, including two of the country's largest; Mr. Chávez's gubernatorial nominees are vulnerable in as many as seven other states. So the president has been stepping up his rhetoric. He threatened one leading opposition candidate with arrest, and recently said he would dispatch tanks to populous Carabobo state in the likely event of an opposition victory there.

Mr. Chávez is one of the hostile foreign leaders that Mr. Obama once said he would meet without preconditions. But the president-elect, who ignored a question about Venezuela at his Nov. 7 news conference, has no reason to throw the self-styled "Bolivarian revolutionary" a lifeline. With oil prices dropping, domestic inflation and crime rates soaring, and his opposition gaining, Mr. Chávez's bid to succeed Fidel Castro as a Latin nemesis of the United States is unraveling. There are Latin American countries where early engagement and attention by the Obama administration could do much good; Venezuela isn't one of them.