The Problem With Clowns

The Washington Post points out some things that are really worth remembering about Hugo Chavez and his clownish antics. The reality is that he is running Venezuela into the ground and doing serious long term damage to that country.

HUGO CHAVEZ got the attention that he craves by comparing President Bush to Satan last week. But the Venezuelan leader's absurd talk may be less threatening than his equally absurd incompetence. Since Mr. Chávez took power seven years ago, Venezuela has mismanaged its oil so disastrously that production may have fallen by almost half, according to the estimates of outsiders, reducing global oil supply by a bit more than 1 percent. Along with natural disasters and Nigerian rebels, Mr. Chávez's ineptitude has contributed to high energy prices.

It takes sustained determination to reduce output by that much, and Mr. Chávez has provided it. He inherited a competent national oil company that produced three times more per worker than its Mexican counterpart. He immediately starved it of investment capital and dispatched ignorant political cronies to oversee it. When this abuse provoked a strike, Mr. Chávez fired the staff en masse, getting rid of two-thirds of the skilled employees and managers.

Read the whole thing, it's quite short. The fact that Chavez appears to have little or no understanding of the realities of the oil markets and is burning through his falling oil revenues spending money on weaponry he does not need are extremely worrisome for Venezuela and it's neighbors. The fact that he appears to be aiming to make himself dictator for life following in the footsteps of his idol Fidel, is even more worrying.