Bush and Chávez Spar at Distance Over Latin Visit...

[bridgit]

'SÃO PAULO, Brazil, March 9 — President Bush began the first full day of his weeklong trip to Latin America here on Friday promising job-creating aid but ended up competing for attention with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who called the American visit an act of imperialism, adding, “Gringo, go home!”

“I don’t think America gets enough credit for trying to help improve people’s lives,” Mr. Bush said, speaking at a joint news conference with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

But while President Bush pressed that point, President Chávez led an “anti-imperialist” rally at which he railed against what he called American hypocrisy and greed, and called Mr. Bush a “political cadaver.”

“The Bush plan is ridiculous,” Mr. Chávez said at the gathering in Buenos Aires, across the Río de la Plata from Montevideo, Uruguay, Mr. Bush’s next stop. “He thinks he is Columbus, discovering poverty after seven years in power.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/americas/10prexy.html?ex=1331182800&en=674f8e8be6dce685&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[wtmusic]

1. Say what you like about Hugo

He has Bush-trashing down to a science.

[bridgit]

2. in spite of his insatiable claims to the contrary, bush offers a stationary target imo...

plodding, pedestrian, transparent of motive; the wrong guy for a said-to-be asymmetric world