Shannon Speaks

There's an interesting article about a recent speech from Thomas Shannon, the State Department's top man for Latin America, on the Miami Herald website. Shannon devotes some words to defending the last few years of Bush Administration policy in Latin America. It's pretty easy to be critical of Bush's policies regardless of region, but it's worth pointing out that all of the most egregious errors that affected our position in Latin America (our stance toward Chile and Mexico during the run-up to the Iraq war, failing to condemn the Venezuelan coup, restricting even further our ties with Cuba) were committed before Shannon arrived at his present post in 2005. For most of the second term, the administration has done a much better job, even if there hasn't been a big bounce in Bush's popularity down south.

When you compare Shannon's tenure to that of his predecessor, Roger Noriega, it's a powerful argument for granting regional State Department posts to career diplomats, not ideologues. Noriega, a conservative partisan who helped author the Helms-Burton Act, came across as a tone deaf bully. He shares a good portion of the blame for ruining what looked a promising opening in Latin American relations with the US (though surely, there is enough blame to go around). Shannon, on the other hand, has cooled American rhetoric toward Venezuela, avoided unnecessary snafus with Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, and generally steered American policy back toward moderation and pragmatism. I wonder if Obama would consider letting him stick around if he won. Not likely, but he's done a good job under difficult circumstances.