Hightower Lowdown

There’s an old saying in Chicago politics: Before you dance on someone’s grave, be sure he’s dead.

George W. and his global-corporate-empire cronies forgot this when they exultantly did a jig on the political grave of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez.

On April 11, a cabal of wealthy Venezuelan elites and the military staged a coup against Chavez, putting him in prison and installing the head of Venezuela’s chamber of commerce as their hand-picked president.

Whatever you think of Chavez, he was the duly elected president, and it’s bad manners to impose an unelected oligarchy on a country. But the Bushites hate Chavez, who bucks their model of a world run by corporate power, so they cheered his demise.

The business junta dissolved the congress, fired the judiciary and state governors, and suspended the constitution, but popular protest swept the country within hours of the coup. To its credit, the military backed the people in a counter-coup, returning Chavez to the presidency only hours after he was deposed.

Every Latin American government had immediately condemned the coup, but our nation publicly gloated about Chavez’s ouster. For George W., democracy is strictly a matter of political convenience—not political commitment.