Ken Berwitz

hugo chavez started as the President of Venezuela 11 years ago.  He has since morphed into its de facto dictator.

And how has Venezuela fared under chavez?  Here is what the Miami Herald thinks -and where the Obama administration stands - in today's editorial.  The bold print is mine:

Venezuela heads toward disaster

OUR OPINION: Region's leaders need to act

Hugo Chavez says Venezuela-U.S. relations will improve

 

Closer relations between Venezuela and the United States are no doubt coming soon, President Hugo Chávez said Saturday, adding that the two countries may soon return each other's ambassadors to their posts.

Chávez made the statement after a dozen South American leaders met with President Barack Obama Saturday morning at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. Chávez called the meeting ``extraordinary.''

''I feel great optimism and the best of good will to advance. We have started off on the right foot,'' Chávez said in a statement released by his office, which noted that he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed renewing each other's ambassadors.

What little is left of Venezuela's democracy has taken a literal beating from President Hugo Chávez's uniformed goon squads -- again.

Police used a variety of weapons, from water cannons to plastic bullets, last week to disperse hundreds of student protesters who refuse to knuckle under to an increasingly desperate and unpopular president determined to remain in power at all costs.

While the president and his followers were celebrating the anniversary of the failed 1992 coup that first brought him to national attention, the students were protesting the deterioration of their country. It wasn't the first time that Mr. Chávez has resorted to force to quell peaceful political opponents, but the frustration level inside the country is rising as Venezuela's political and economic situation goes from bad to worse.

Rolling blackouts, currency devaluation and price inflation (the worst in Latin America), water shortages and scarce commodities -- this is what 11 years of a Chávez presidency have produced.

Dismal energy program

As if to underline the utter befuddlement of Mr. Chávez's inept government, an advisory team from Cuba, of all places, was brought in to improve the dismal energy program. Cuba? That's like asking Scott Rothstein for advice on legal ethics.

The problem with PDVSA, the oil company, as Venezuelans well know, is that Mr. Chávez turned it into a sinecure for political cronies, destroying its once admirable efficiency and productive value. Only by putting the experts back in charge can it hope to recover, but President Chávez is not about to hand authority over to anyone who is not a known loyalist.

The problems at PDVSA are emblematic of what's wrong with Venezuela and why his Bolivarian revolution is in trouble. Mr. Chávez has run the economy, and the country, into the ground, but that hasn't stopped him from making trouble wherever he can.

As the streets of Caracas were in turmoil, the U.S. director of national intelligence, former Admiral Dennis Blair, was giving Congress an unvarnished assessment of Mr. Chávez's presidency that underlines the danger he represents to the entire region.

He has cultivated friendships in all the wrong places, beginning with Iran, spent $6 billion to buy weapons from Russia, and provided covert support to the terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Pressure Chávez

All of this spells disaster for the people of Venezuela -- and the hemisphere. It can be avoided only by the concerted effort of other countries in the region to pressure Mr. Chávez to moderate his behavior and adhere to the rules of democracy.

Isn't that what the Organization of American States is for? Mr. Chávez has undermined, if not destroyed Venezuela's once vibrant, if imperfect, democracy. He has bullied his neighbors, fueled a regional arms race and brought political tensions inside the country to a boiling point. The region's leaders shouldn't wait for domestic bloodshed or a cross-border conflict to move them to act.

President Obama defecated on Honduras when, in strict accordance with its constitution, it removed manuel zelaya as its President. 

But hugo chaves - this sorry excuse for a head of state and his sorry excuse for a government - is what President Obama wants to improve relations with.

Do you need me to draw your conclusions?  I won't write any more, because I assume you do not.