On Friday Barack Obama spelled out his Latin America policy (it’s just like his Middle East policy—talk to everybody), and inadvertently supplied another example of his stunning ignorance of history and naive foreign policy ideas. The speech is transcribed at the official Obama campaign web site: Renewing U.S. Leadership in the Americas.

Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.

No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum.

This is pathetic. Hugo Chavez came to power during the Clinton Administration, and was first elected President of Venezuela in 1998, two years before the Bush Administration took office.