Obama at the Summit of the Americas..... Bravo!

 I have to throw a bone to the president for his performance this past weekend at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama.

A quick scroll through the posts on this blog will show that I have not been especially complementary of Obama's foreign policy. In November of last year, I suggested that Obama's foreign policy suffered from Carter Syndrome. I have also worried about the perfect storm of foreign policy problems that seemed poised to overwhelm the last years of Obama's presidency. I've been much less critical of Obama's handling of environmental policy, particularly where the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is concerned. One can certainly levy the critique that Obama has failed to live up to expectations on issues like immigration and the environment, but I think that criticism needs to be measured against the level of opposition he's faced and his evident determination to tackle climate change in the time he has left. I've also expressed considerable sympathy for the challenges Obama (or any president) faces in being the leader of the most what remains the "indispensable country."

But this past weekend, at least, I began to think about how I'll miss his combativeness and ability to speak and think extemporaneously. 

Deft Summitry

America's relations with Latin America are fraught with some ugly history. As important, America's global agenda tends to result in some rather uneven attention being paid to Latin America. Indeed, a major line of critique suggests that "America's Backyard" too often looks like an overgrown lawn than a manicured garden. Moreover, by the time America engages, it often shows up with policies equivalent to the application of a weed whacker. The very first Summit of the Americas was held in Miami, Florida and strongly backed by the Clinton Administration. While the Free Trade Area of the Americas component of the Summit process died in the late 1990s, the Summit itself has continued as a useful means of sustaining focus on a range of shared hemispheric challenges (As an aside, it's one of the few mechanisms that connects Canada to Latin America at all).

Obama formally spoke of his initiatives to solidify America's attention on the Western Hemisphere. Some might argue that they've seen this movie before (JFK's Alliance for Progress, George H.W. Bush's Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, Clinton's Free Trade Area of the Americas, etc).

However, what struck me about this past weekend's summit was the way in which President Obama handled the cookie-cutter critiques of the United States offered up by some of Latin America's populist leadership. The President has, of course, diffused perennial line of criticism by Latin American governments through recent moves toward normalizing relations with Cuba. However, that didn't stop Raul Castro from speaking for nearly an hour (he was given 8 minutes), much of which was a re-hash of American injustices toward Cuba going back to before the infamous Bay of Pigs fiasco. The softening of Cuba policy didn't stop others, including Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, from doing similarly. Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, successor to leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez, intended to grand-stand by presenting Obama with a petition 11 million signatures long.

President Obama politely listened to President Castro's remarks, but then wisely slipped out the door as other delivered their invective. I am regularly surprised at the degree to which leaders like Nicolas Maduro try to deflect the mismanagement and incompetence of their own governance by blaming their problems on the United States, American corporations, or the CIA. Venezuela is a particularly stark, and depressing, state of affairs. It ought to be one of the wealthiest countries in the Western Hemisphere, but the combination of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have destroyed the economy, probably sowing the seeds of their own ouster from office. Blaming outside forces might seem politically expedient, but the chickens will come home to roost.

One thing I liked about President Obama's handling of the situation this past weekend was the degree to which he was willing to acknowledge America's mistakes, but also push back (see link to press conference video). He argued that dwelling on things that occurred before he was alive did nothing to alleviate poverty, address human rights, or promote the consolidation of democratic governance. America had made mistakes, but that wasn't going to stop American presidents from talking about these things, nor could America's mistakes take away from the universalism of what they are saying.

Obama has a lot on his plate, things that follow him where ever he goes. This past weekend was no different where the framework agreement with Iran on its nuclear program was a hot topic among reporters. His willingness, of late, to be feistier and more combative about his positions on a range of issues is welcome. I wish he could have displayed this kind of think-on-your-feet combativeness earlier in his administration.

Better late than never? No. Not in the case of a presidency that only lasts 8 years. But he deserves some points from the weekend......