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Go Home How Hugo Chavez Could Help Mitt Romney Win the Election

PLANK SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

How Hugo Chavez Could Help Mitt Romney Win the Election

BY FRANCISCO TORO

With pundits rushing to file their Romney campaign obits ahead of the rush, the general consensus is that only a big time October surprise can save the GOP now. And while pundits generally look to the Middle East for likely sources of race-scrambling shocks, this year’s black swan could well fly in from the South, instead.

By a quirk of fate, Venezuelans go to the polls to pick a president exactly 30 days before Americans do this year. Fourteen years into his term of office, an ailing Hugo Chávez faces his most competitive race yet, against an opposition united behind Henrique Capriles, a popular young state governor running a lean, focused campaign. Though Venezuelan polling is all over the place, some of the better ones now show a very close race, and the momentum is unmistakably on Capriles’ side. But that begs the question, would Hugo Chávez go quietly?

There are good reasons to think he wouldn’t. Obsessed with countering a European-style “color revolution” Chávez has gone to elaborate extremes to give himself options in case he loses the election. A close Iranian ally, Chávez has stuck by the Bashar al Assad regime through thick and thin over the last 18 months supplying diesel and diplomatic cover and seeming to relish its capacity to resist democratic mobilization. As this Council on Foreign Relations Contingency Planning Memo stresses Chávez has created a well-armed civilian militia that operates outside the formal military chain of command, and answering only to him. Some observers are convinced it’s patterned explicitly Iran’s Basij militia whose success in putting down the Green Movement of 2009 Chávez unquestionably admires. Chillingly, he’s explicitly warned of civil war on more than one occasion should the opposition threaten his hold on power.

Were this happening anywhere else in Latin America, U.S. pols could be foregiven for sleeping through it. But Venezuela remains a major oil exporter and the fourth largest supplier of foreign oil to the U.S. behind only Saudi Arabia and its Northern and Southern Neighbors. A spasm of violence and instability following a Chávez defeat would have immediate repercussions on world oil markets, and such shocks make themselves felt in U.S. swing voters’ pocketbooks immediately and painfully, through a mechanism that conveniently doubles as a G.O.P. talking point: the gas pump. 

With just six weeks to go, Mitt Romney needs a miracle to turn around a failing campaign. Hugo Chávez might be about to hand him one on a plate. 

Francisco Toro blogs about the Chávez Era at CaracasChronicles.com

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14 comments

Why would Hugo Chavez want to support a sabre-rattling anti-Socialist anti-Communist conservative like Romney?

- AllanL5

September 27, 2012 at 9:12am

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It usually helps if you read beyond the headline, Allan!

- Francisco Toro

September 27, 2012 at 9:39am

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How would Romney benefit from this?

- gurwia

September 27, 2012 at 9:44am

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$5/gallon gas!

- Francisco Toro

September 27, 2012 at 9:48am

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I don't know about this. The civil war in Syria (which is also an oil producer) has not created much of a shock. I also doubt Chavez will lose even if he loses. 6 years ago the election was stolen from AMLO in Mexico, and PRI won more handily than I would have expected this go around, and this is in Mexico which does have a more mature Democracy (by Latin American standards) I think Chavez will lie. And any type of resistance to his lie will take a little longer to play out than Francisco is saying, I think the US election will be over before it hits any critical mass. As to oil prices, they are already overpriced and I don't think there is much room for a spike.

- blackton

September 27, 2012 at 9:49am

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I'm not sure that events in Venezuela, whatever happens, will help Romney. Even if Chávez loses the election and stages a coup or something similar to stay in power, the effect on US politics would depend the reactions of the candidates. Mr. Romney has proven himself singularly inept at turning problems abroad into electoral advantage. After the recent events in Libya, he manged to look like an irresponsible blowhard to everyone except the far right, who like that sort of thing. A sitting president has many more options than just talking, and I think the odds are good that Mr. Obama could handle a crisis in Venezuela in a way that would improve his chances.

- K_Wilson

September 27, 2012 at 10:08am

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Once again dear readers, it's all about the price of gas if there's trouble after the election. Blackton raises an interesting counter point about the effect of the Syrian civil war and the price of gas, a view which I lean towards, but Toro is correct to point out the possibility of problems.

- jet

September 27, 2012 at 11:58am

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Trouble after the Venezuelan election that is.

- jet

September 27, 2012 at 11:58am

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A few things: Syria produces around 400,000 barrels a day, Venezuela produces around 6 times that number. Oil is priced at the margin, and a short-term disruption can easily cause a short term price-spike, which can be expected to pass through to pump prices within a couple of days. Basically, my argument isn't about the way reactions to a Venezuelan crisis are judged by the political class. It's a lot simpler than that: about low-information swing voters in the U.S. going to fill up their gas tanks the week before the U.S. election, finding it costs 60% more than two weeks ago and saying THAT’S IT, I’M THROWING OBAMA OUT! (I don't even think they need to know why the price spike happened for that to be the net result.)

- Francisco Toro

September 27, 2012 at 12:41pm

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Actually. EU and China are bigger players and more likely to produce a nasty October Surprise than Venezuela--- or now, more likely, a Spring Surprise that destroys whoever is the unprepared, inadequate Prez at the time.

- drofnats1

September 27, 2012 at 2:12pm

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If Venezuela become unstable, we could just declare al la W. Bush, that the world is better off without Venezuela and invade with a few no bid contracts to keep us safe; and President Obama could land on a flight deck under a sign that says, "Mission Accomplished!". No?

- Nusholtz

September 27, 2012 at 2:44pm

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Mr. Toro, isn't this exactly the type of problem that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed for?

- zardoz67

September 27, 2012 at 3:29pm

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I should think Chavez would vastly prefer NOT to have Mitt in the White House. He's likely to try and annex Venezuela.

- Sophia

September 27, 2012 at 4:30pm

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Call me skeptical that a Chavez attempt to keep power by violence in Venezuela (and the resulting oil spike) would lead to American voters turning on Obama. For one thing, I would readily expect the US government to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to maintain price stability just in the event of something like this. Second, Obama would probably come out quite firmly against Chavez's attempt to steal an election or overturn electoral results -- not by military means, but by the firmest diplomatic and economic means including freezing Venezuelan government assets in the US (thereby effectively confiscating and nationalizing thousands of Citgo stations). That sort of assertive action is likely to play well with the public, at least in the short term, and a quick stabilization of prices would not cause Obama a whole lot of electoral pain. And what kind of gain would Romney get out of this? It's not like anyone is interested in an invasion of Venezuela, and if Obama doesn't go there but uses all other levers of US power against Chavez what does Romney really have? At least the Republican base has been rhetorically conditioned to invade or intervene militarily with Iran, but no one mentions Venezuela anymore. Romney jumping up to demand military invasion would be a shock to the system of even most Republicans, not to mention everyone else. Given his track record, Romney might certainly try that but I expect this gambit to go over about as well as his attack on Obama over the murder of Christopher Stevens and the Cairo embassy tweets.

- wildboy

September 27, 2012 at 5:26pm

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