{"id":15641,"date":"2008-05-23T15:05:58","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T19:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15641.html"},"modified":"2008-05-23T15:05:58","modified_gmt":"2008-05-23T19:05:58","slug":"obama-takes-a-controversial-message-to-miami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/obama-takes-a-controversial-message-to-miami\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama takes a controversial message to Miami"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s always a little something fun about presidential candidates appealing for votes in unexpected places. Take Barack Obama, for example, visiting the Cuban American National Foundation this afternoon, where he’ll defend his position<\/a> of changing course on Cuba policy.<\/p>\n

“Now I know what the easy thing is to do for American politicians,” Obama will say, according to prepared excerpts. “Every four years, they come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba. That’s what John McCain did the other day. He joined the parade of politicians who make the same empty promises year after year, decade after decade.”<\/p>\n

“Instead of offering a strategy for change, he chose to distort my position, embrace George Bush’s, and continue a policy that’s done nothing to advance freedom for the Cuban people.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Cuban American National Foundation, historically, this isn’t a group you’d approach with a less-than-hard-line on relations with the Castro regime. The group was founded by Jorge Mas Canosa, a stalwart of anti-Castro sentiment. Normally, anyone who wants to stray from the U.S. policy of the last half-century would go out of their way to avoid the Cuban American National Foundation.<\/p>\n

But Obama is not running a normal campaign, and he’s apparently willing to take his message to an unfriendly audience, seeing if he can maybe win them over. For that matter, these are not normal political conditions, with Cuban-American voters open to competing policies that would have been unwelcome in any recent campaign cycle.<\/p>\n

This strikes me as good policy and probably good politics. On the prior, the status quo doesn’t work and never has. We’ve tried the same policy for a half-century and have nothing to show for it. On the latter, Obama doesn’t have much to lose — hard-liners weren’t going to vote for him anyway, but he’s making an appeal to those open to a new way. At a minimum, some in the Cuban-American community who disagree with him might end up respecting him for trying.<\/p>\n

The AP described Obama’s speech this afternoon as “daring<\/a>.” Good for him; we need more daring, not less.
\n
\nOf course, I should also note that today’s remarks are not exclusively about Cuba — Obama is outline a new regional approach<\/a> to U.S. policy towards Latin America.<\/p>\n

Obama will also discuss his differences with McCain and Bush and stress the need to renew the leadership of the United States in the hemisphere through direct diplomacy.<\/p>\n

As President, Barack Obama will:<\/p>\n

* Engage in direct diplomacy throughout the hemisphere to advance democracy and promote American values and ideals;<\/p>\n

* Immediately allow Cuban Americans unlimited family travel and remittances to the island;<\/p>\n

* Create an Energy Partnership for the Americas — a regional energy initiative to develop alternative energy and promote clean and sustainable growth;<\/p>\n

* Launch a regional security initiative to develop a new approach to battling criminality and drug trafficking in the hemisphere;<\/p>\n

* Target development assistance for Latin America aimed at promoting bottom-up growth;<\/p>\n

* Reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in the White House and open more consulates and expand the Peace Corps in Latin America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a very progressive, forward-thinking policy towards Latin America. We’ll see how the Cuban American National Foundation responds, but it’s hard to deny the merit of the regional approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s always a little something fun about presidential candidates appealing for votes in unexpected places. Take Barack Obama, for example, visiting the Cuban American National Foundation this afternoon, where he’ll defend his position of changing course on Cuba policy. “Now I know what the easy thing is to do for American politicians,” Obama will say, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}