Rice’s new strategy on Chávez: effective, but not much fun

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It used to appear that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice enjoyed trading verbal barbs with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Chávez would call President George W. Bush “a donkey.” Condi would fire back that Chávez was “really, really destroying his own country.” It was good fun. But sometime around March, the Bush administration’s tactics began to change. These days, when Hugo acts like an impetuous toddler, the Bush administration treats him accordingly: by ignoring him.

The 180-degree turn in tactics was on full display yesterday when Condoleezza Rice spoke about Latin America with members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Chávez had just boycotted the U.N. General Assembly and had given an interview to the AP in which he said the U.S. was “hunting” him and wanted him dead. But in her appearance yesterday, Rice didn’t bite. She didn’t mention Chávez by name once, instead referring only to “exceptions” to democracy in Latin America who “may be noisy … but are heading in the opposite direction of the hemisphere as a whole.” This was hardly the Power Condi of 2005 who showed up at Wiesbaden Army Airfield wearing knee-high leather. In fact, Rice went out of her way yesterday to check the tough talk at the door. Though her remarks were typically laden with language about the transformative powers of democracy, she also made it clear that, when it comes to picking allies in the hemisphere, “the U.S. charges no ideological price for our partnership.”

At least by Rice’s account, the change in tactics is working. After Bush refused to mention Chávez’s name on a tour of Latin America in March, Condi says, “Chávez was going around saying, ‘Why will not President Bush mention my name?'” “There is actually, frankly, nothing that he likes better than to have the United States responding to him,” Rice added. That may be so, but I’m still going to miss the fireworks.