There was quite a media din over the president’s greeting of Venezuela’s strongman at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain over the weekend. Sure, it was a first. But along with bones he threw to Cuba, it crowded out weightier news.
Obama may have shaken hands, accepted an idiotic book and politely listened to diatribes from regional troublemakers. But for our ally Colombia, he wasn’t just gesturing. He was delivering results.
It started Saturday, when he put himself next to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at lunch and then studiously exchanged notes.
Having listened to Uribe, (and that must have been a nice dose of sanity after enduring 50 minutes of ravings from Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, or weird conspiracy theories by Bolivia’s Evo Morales), Obama then seemed to realize that the long-stalled Colombia free trade agreement should have been passed yesterday.
The president announced that his team must find a way to pass the agreement. With world trade down 80%, the pact opens new markets to the U.S. He demanded immediate action, asking Colombia’s trade minister to fly to Washington this week.
Then it got even better: Obama invited Uribe to the White House and promised to visit Colombia himself, allowing the Colombians to lay out for him their vast economic and social progress, and their desire to integrate into global trade.
Thank you, President Obama for reversing your position and exercising your storied capacity for wisdom on this issue.
A cautionary observation from Ed Morrissey at HotAir:
Interestingly, this got no press attention during the Summit last weekend. The New York Times never mentioned it at all. One has to wonder whether the media wants to allow Obama to reverse himself yet again, back to opposition to the agreement, without the embarrassment of vacillation. Let’s hope that Obama sticks with the decision he made this weekend, and hope that this expiration date does not have its own expiration date.
I am grateful for Obama’s step in the right direction on trade with Columbia. But, as Jim Geraghty is doing, I’ll hold my full applause until there is an acknowledgement of the reversal of position:
I would just note that as recently as the third presidential debate, Obama suggested that people who supported the deal were rewarding a country where violence is perpetrated against workers, where “labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis.”
Now it’s a great big “never mind.”
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1 Comment
April 22, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Thank you!