Time: Obama 'Gets' Latin Leftists Like Chavez, Now Chavez Needs to Read Obama Books

In an article titled "Signs of Spring," Time’s Tim Padgett can see only good news in President Obama’s warm words for leftist Latin American autocrats like Hugo Chavez: "they shared a warm handshake Friday night, during which Obama tried his Spanish (mucho gusto, or "pleased to meet you") and Chávez insisted, according to a Venezuela communiqué, "I want to be your friend."

Doesn’t that sound like Obama said "Much pleasure!" (This sounds more like a Bill Clinton salutation.) But Padgett’s thrilled leg kept bouncing about the friendship-building on the radical left:

So, it seems, does the rest of the region after this summit. To most Latin Americans, Obama could not present a starker contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush, whom Chávez once called "the devil" and whose relations with the hemisphere were strained at best. Even Bill Clinton as President didn't set foot south of the border until five months into his second term.

Chavez handed Obama a book by Uruguayan radical Eduardo Galeano called The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Padgett explained why the Marxist, hate-America narrative isn’t really the point:

[E]ven if you don't subscribe to its Marxist-tinged polemic, The Open Veins is one of the best introductions to the longstanding Latin grievances that keep producing populist leaders like Chávez. It was an appropriate gift for Obama — not because he's clueless about that manera de pensar, but because he proved at the Trinidad summit to be the first U.S. President to get it. "We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms," to Latin America, he told the gathering. "But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations."

Padgett applauded Obama’s solution to the "Cuba problem" – please stop seeing communist Cuba as a problem – and then insisted that Obama must start pumping some "stimulus" aid southward. He concluded by lecturing Latin America’s yanqui-bashers they should read Obama’s books, since he favors a "common-sense, post-ideological" approach:

Obama needs to follow Trinidad's feel-good rhetoric with more concrete programs, although he and Latin America know he can't do much in the short term thanks to the U.S.'s economic calamity. Many Latin American officials in recent months have told TIME they're not looking for much for now; but they do want to make sure Obama shifts hemispheric priorities away from the U.S. obsession with free trade and the drug war to development concerns like education, alternative energy and democratic institution-building, which the U.S. President did engage in Trinidad.

At the same time, if Chávez and other Latin leftists want Obama to read Galeano, they in turn should read Obama. In his own books, like The Audacity of Hope, Obama lays out the common-sense, post-ideological political philosophy that has led to the U.S. shift on Latin America that so many in the region are now applauding. It's something Latin America's yanqui-bashers, if they want to keep receiving applause from Latin voters themselves, should keep in mind.

AP and Agence France Presse each noticed that Galeano's Marxist screed shot up the Amazon best-seller list. Apparently, Hugo Chavez is almost as much of a literary trend-setter as Oprah Winfrey. AFP's story showed Obama was nothing if not conciliatory toward Hugo:

Chavez had inscribed the book to his US counterpart with the message "For Obama, with affection."

The Venezuelan leader told reporters Saturday that "this book is a monument in our Latin American history. It allows us to learn history, and we have to build on this history."

Obama on Sunday called the gift "a nice gesture."

"I think it was, it was a nice gesture to give me a book," he said at a press conference at the conclusion of the three day summit. "I'm a reader."

Obama added that recent harsh rhetoric did not mean that the two countries could not engage in civil dialogue.

"It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interest of the United States," Obama said.