WHAT's in a handshake? The clasping of hands by President Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has set off a debate over what kind of signal Obama was sending. To the White House, the friendly Obama-Chavez encounter at a weekend summit of Latin leaders was a sign of a new US foreign policy aimed at improving relations around the world. “It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States,” Obama said. But to some of his critics, the handshake was a sign of American weakness. “Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chavez smiling and meeting with the president as proof that Chavez is now legitimate, that he's acceptable,” Republican Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the US House of Representatives, told NBC's “Today” show. Obama and Chavez had two highly public encounters at the summit in Trinidad and Tobago – a handshake, a chat and then later when Chavez gave Obama a book, “The Open Veins of Latin America,” published in 1971 by Eduardo Galeano. Stark change It was a stark change from, for example, the 2006 UN General Assembly, when Chavez told world leaders that President George W. Bush was the devil and that his sulfurous stink still lingered a day after he had spoken to the same event. The Bush administration had accused the Chavez government of backing Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels against the US-backed Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe, and charged he was responsible for spreading anti-Americanism in the region. The leftist Chavez, on the other hand, accused the United States of having sought his overthrow. Obama and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe were photographed sitting next to one another during the regional summit, discussing a stalled US-Colombian trade agreement. Dana Perino, who was White House spokeswoman for Bush, said she doubted Chavez' behavior would change as a result of his meeting with Obama. “Dictators by their very nature don't like change – and I don't think we'll see them change their behavior towards us or, more importantly, towards their own people one iota. It would have been good to see more visible support for democratic leaders like President Uribe,” she said. But the Obama administration insisted the meeting had already paid dividends – that Venezuela might send an ambassador back to the United States and that Washington is considering doing the same. “Look at what we got just simply out of this weekend. Two years ago, Hugo Chavez kicked our ambassador out of Caracas, nothing – wanted nothing to do with being a responsible part of a community of nations,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Gingrich said if Obama wanted to talk to Chavez he should have done so in a “cold, distant way.” “It does matter to the world if the United States tolerates a vicious anti-American propaganda campaign and then smiles and greets the person who has systemically been anti-American for his entire career,” he said.
