Bush & Chavez in the Echo Chamber

by Rick Rockwell

For those who live outside the Beltway, meaning 99 percent of the U.S., “the echo chamber” is the latest over-used, over-tortured DC cliché. Nevertheless, President George Bush and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez exist inside that chamber together, at least for the moment.

What “the echo chamber” means is how the same discussion lines surface in the same media time and again, until some seemingly unassailable political image is constructed. Thus, to the right, Hugo Chavez is the spawn of Castro, the next Stalin, and an off-kilter authoritarian on a petro-binge. To the left, Bush is the moral equivalent of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, the man who destroyed generations of democratic progress, trading his country’s soul for economic success for the super-elite while attempting to squash his political enemies in any way he saw fit.

The truth, as we know, is far less dramatic, although of course, there are parallels.

What is at issue though is the aftermath of Bush’s Latin American tour, which this blog prematurely put in the closet last week, as it was being overshadowed by the scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys. (Please see, “Bush: Winning and Losing the Propaganda Battle.”)

Over the weekend, however, the sonar started pinging about various items surfacing in their respective echo chambers: conservative bloggers noting that Bush’s trip was an unrivaled triumph, and a more measured view of the entire trip from Argentina. (ABC News and Barbara Walters also landed an exclusive with Chavez, but more on that outside of this essay.)

First, to the conservatives, with a widely-circulated editorial from The Investor’s Business Daily, which said basically the president’s trip hit a home run. The IBD made this judgment, because Bush supposedly cut good business deals in Brazil and Uruguay while the symbolic impact of the trip had Chavez on the defensive. Likely much of that editorial is true, but some key areas are telling. First, as a sign of Chavez’ weakness The IBD cites two anti-U.S. rallies in Caracas that failed to gather big crowds. Of course, the big draw, Chavez, was out of the country on his own Latin American tour, so that’s not much of a marker.

A better note would be to check news and photos of all the protests that didn’t get much traction in most mainstream U.S. publications. You can see some of that over at liberal blog Anything They Say. The Investor’s Business Daily deflects those protests, saying the quality of business done and the political results for politicians who talked trade with Bush should be the real areas of analysis. The IBD cites The Los Angeles Times as one of the publications with a similar view. However, The IBD leaves out that in the Los Angeles Times story, the presidents of Brazil and Uruguay are noted for wanting to do business with both Bush and Chavez. As usual, what is left out is important.

Conservative bloggers in Venezuela and Nicaragua also assailed Chavez while he was touring the region. Despite the negative hyperbole in these reports, there is at least some truth to how polarizing Chavez can be. But as voices on the left note, certainly, no more so than Bush.

Perhaps the conservates should check out what Julia Sweig has to say over at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) website. The CFR is no radical leftist bastion, certainly not when they have Max Boot on the payroll, one of the great apologists for U.S. imperialism. Sweig, by the way, says Bush’s trip will be used for the next 15 years as a benchmark of how low U.S. relations with Latin America can go and how stale trade formulas are not the future of that relationship.

In another part of the echo chamber, The New York Times published an essay from Argentine author Luisa Valenzuela, who criticizes both Chavez and Bush. However, she notes, Chavez brings a different view to the table even if he is a populist demagogue. He gets points in Latin America for wanting to try something new, and indeed the Bolivarian Revolution is unique, not just warmed over Castro-style Communism.

But that’s a rare view that bubbles to the surface in the mainly conservative U.S. media echo chamber.

(Editorial graphic "Arbusto Ricochet" by DarkBlack, and used with permission. To see similar editorial graphics, check out DarkBlack's website.)

media
journalism
Latin America
George Bush
Hugo Chavez
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