The LA Times story giving the joyous details of Hugo Chavez's 51-49 loss in his referendum effort to become President Forever offers one startling nugget that forces me to raise a bit my estimation of Hugo: In declaring that a narrow win would have been "Pyrrhic," Hugo showed a better vocabulary than I had credited him wwith. Glad to see he paid attention in school. Meanwhile, the classiest royal of them all, Spain's King Juan Carlos, who helped the transition to Spanish democracy in the 1970s, and who recently told Hugo, at the Ibero-American Summit, to "shut up," told Chavez to respect the referendum results. (Another fortuitous factor: Jimmy Carter was not in Venezuela to help Hugo win.)
Meanwhile, a "hat's off" to Venezuela's students. In stark contrast to the lefty brown-shirt boors who shout down conservative speakers on American college campuses, Venezuela's youth protested peacefully and bravely, facing off against a thug dictator. And they voted overwhelmingly against Chavez. Would that American students would conduct themselves so honorably when protesting.
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