Tom Hayden
Posted: July 14, 2009 02:07 PM

Apparent differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are threatening to confuse American policy towards the coup in Honduras.

The differences seem to go back to the 2008 presidential primaries when Obama embraced a broad new direct diplomacy while Clinton hewed to a tougher traditional stance. Clinton era advisers like James Carville and Stanley Greenberg had gone on to become political consultants for Latin American presidential candidates favoring free trade policies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, and Argentina, as depicted in the documentary film "Our Brand Is Crisis."

Now Obama, fresh from a hemispheric summit in Trinidad, is trying to collaborate with the Organization of American States [OAS] in its unified pressure and isolation against the coup leaders in Honduras. The newly-appointed "foreign minister" of the coup-based regime has called Obama "that little black guy who doesn't even know where Tegucigalpa is located." [NYT, July 12] So much for the character of the coup plotters.

Secretary Clinton, while formally supporting the Obama/OAS initiative, has questionable links with the coup leaders through two close associates. First, her pugnacious media spokesman from campaign days, Lanny Davis, is the paid spinner and lobbyist for the Latin American equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce, the alliance supporting h leader Robert Micheletti. One of Davis' first moves so far was to announce that "foreign minister" Enrique Ortez had been removed from office for calling Obama an ignorant "little black guy." Otherwise, Davis is a launching a full-court press to change Obama's policy in Honduras from rejecting the coup as illegitimate to one of open-ended talks that could last indefinitely, allowing the coup to consolidate.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/obama-vs-clinton-on-hondu_b_231168.html