article_snippet.sent: And back in 2009, the President -- new on the job -- was caught flat footed by a fast-talking, fiery anti-American president of Venezuela.
article_snippet.sent: The late Hugo Chavez outplayed the leader of the free world, who had just taken office and was trying to show America's new "outstretched hand" toward the foe of the George W. Bush era.
article_snippet.sent: Yet the problems in Cartagena weren't just symbolic.
article_snippet.sent: All this stands in contrast to the optimism of the early Clinton years, when the American President issued an invitation to "democratically elected" heads of state of Latin America, which was then breaking the chains of military dictatorship.
article_snippet.sent: True, the American President has come armed with the American President new Cuba policy.
article_snippet.sent: Unfortunately, in an effort to placate critics who say Obama is not doing more for pro-democracy activists, the White House has miscalculated with Venezuela, handing the repressive regime of Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro, a stick with which to beat the U.S. Obama has long and rightly ignored Maduro's claims that America America planned to overthrow Maduro.
article_snippet.sent: But a modest plan to impose sanctions has suddenly handed Maduro -- who has presided over an economic catastrophe in Cuba -- a way to portray the American President a victim of America, something the American President will no doubt play that up in Panama.
article_snippet.sent: All this risks again reviving memories of past tensions with Latin Americans who already have complicated feelings toward America over America Cold War support for unseemly right-wing dictators, a policy America claimed to pursue in the name of preventing Soviet-backed communism from taking hold.
article_snippet.sent: Too many national leaders are eroding democratic norms: Opposition leaders are in prison in Venezuela; a prosecutor who criticized the President was found dead in Argentina; press freedom is under siege in several countries; and corruption is reaching new highs.
article_snippet.sent: For the millions in Latin America that still live in poverty, these freedoms can seem like a distant luxury.