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Opinion

My opinion Andrés Oppenheimer : Clinton, Obama differ on Latin America

My opinion Andrés Oppenheimer
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.19.2008
Now that Sen. Barack Obama is the front-runner for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, it's time to answer a question that many U.S. Hispanics and Latin Americans are asking: Would he be good for Latin America?
On the minus side, Obama has never been to Latin America, as he told me in an interview last year. And when I asked him who are the three Latin American leaders he respects the most, it took him a while to scan through his mental C-drive and respond, "the president of Chile," whom he correctly identified as a woman but failed to mention by name. (I didn't press him about the remaining two.)
Obama was quick to add, however, that "my interest and regard for Latin America is one that has been developing for a long period of time," and that he would visit Mexico after winning his party's nomination, before the November elections.
By comparison, his Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Clinton has visited Latin America 18 times, and — not that she learned much about the region on that occasion — spent her honeymoon in Acapulco, her campaign aides tell me. Presumptive Republican candidate Sen. John McCain has made "dozens" of trips to the region, his aides say.
But senior aides to Obama say their candidate is the one who would most likely improve U.S.-Latin American ties overnight.
Anthony Lake, a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama who served as National Security Council chief in the Clinton White House, told me in a telephone interview that Obama's election "would be truly transformative around the world, including Latin America, in a way that no other candidate would be because he represents change."
"The act of the American people in electing a Barack Obama would not only say that we are presenting a new face to the world, but also it would be a statement about how the American people themselves are embracing change," Lake said. "That is an essential step for renewing America's leadership in the world."
Asked how Obama's proposed policies toward Latin America differ from Sen. Clinton's, senior aides to Obama pointed at several differences:
● Obama and Clinton have clashed in several debates over whether they would meet — without preconditions — with U.S. foes, such as Cuba's Fidel Castro or Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. He said yes, she said no.
Foreign-policy aides to Obama say his is a "a stand of principle," rather than a promise to meet with anybody under any circumstances. The Clinton camp attributes Obama's stand to lack of experience: Meeting adversaries without an agenda exposes you to be used by them for their own propaganda purposes, they say.
● On Cuba, neither Obama nor Clinton are calling for an immediate relaxation of the U.S. embargo. But the Obama camp says he is proposing more aggressively to reverse President Bush's 2004 restrictions on Cuban exiles' family travel and remittances to the island.
The Clinton camp says that Sen. Clinton, too, favors a relaxation of travel and remittances restrictions, and points out that in 2004 Obama supported lifting the U.S. embargo.
● On immigration, Obama aides say he was more active than Clinton in pushing for the comprehensive immigration-reform bill that failed to pass in Congress last year, and that would have provided a path to legalization to millions of undocumented workers.
And while Clinton opposes giving driver's licenses to undocumented residents, Obama has said that's better than risking road accidents by untrained drivers. The Clinton camp pooh-poohs the first allegation, and admits the second one.
● On trade, Obama and Clinton oppose a pending free-trade deal with Colombia. They are also criticizing the 1994 free-trade agreement with Mexico, and are calling for its revision.
My opinion: Overall, both Obama and Clinton would be better than McCain for Latin America on the immigration front (a key issue for Mexico and Central America) and worse than the likely Republican candidate on the trade front (a key issue for Panama, Colombia, and South American countries seeking free-trade deals with Washington).
Between Obama and Clinton, Obama offers change with some uncertainty, while Clinton offers reforms with a measure of predictability.
The litmus test may boil down to which of the two would pick the first-ever Hispanic-American secretary of state. Now that we've had two black secretaries of state in a row, it may be time to pick one with strong ties to the largest U.S. minority group, and who understands one of the most important — and neglected — regions for U.S. national interests.
E-mail Andrés Oppenheimer at aoppenheimer@miamiherald.com.
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