Celebrating Thuggishness

I salute you, Hugo Chávez.

Those are words I never thought I’d write. But nor did I think it possible that a Latin American strongman, issued from the barracks, accumulating power through threats, slandering opponents as “traitors,” buying support with $150 million a day in oil money, and bent on a socialist revolution, would accept a marginal electoral defeat.

No, if it came to the humiliation of a 51 to 49 percent rejection of his proposal to end term limits and undermine private property rights and centralize authority, he would surely use a controlled Election Commission to tweak the numbers for Venezuela’s glorious march to socialism.

And yet, there was a glum Chávez declaring in the unadorned language no totalitarian system can abide that: “The people’s decision will be upheld in respect of the basic rule of democracy: the winning option is the one that gets most votes.”

The United States might ponder those words — not just because of what happened in the presidential election of 2000; not just because the arithmetic of voting has proved unpalatable in Palestine; not just because of the past U.S.-abetted trampling of elected Latin American leaders in Chile and elsewhere — but because democracy was alive and vital in Venezuela on Sunday in a way foreign to President Bush’s America.

His years in Europe and the salons of NYC have done wonders for this columnist's outlook and views of " George Bush's America". I don;t understand how Cohen can characterize the practice of democracy in America as being "Bush's battered and blathering democracy". Cohen does not deign to mention something all journalists have objected to (or should) the supppression of freedom of speech -the closing of nroadcast networks, the closing of printed media outlets, the censorship that Chavez iimposes. I thought democracy depended on free speech to truly flourish.

No mention in article of Chavez' s thugs attack on Jewish center night before election. Or that he stole last election on recall, or that he probably lost by 20% this time. Unstated- but obvious to NY times readers- he is holding up Chavez as honorable loser - unlike Bush in 2000, who stole election he lost , as Paul Krugman tells us every few months.