Harper Gets It Even If Newt Does Not

From NBC:
"...Canada's conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper vigorously defended President Obama's handling of Hugo Chavez at this weekend's summit...Harper said that he is a conservative, but thinks that Obama's handling of Venezuela was effective at advancing America's values and interests.

"Let me be a bit of a conservative defender of the president in this regard," Harper said. "I was present obviously at all the meetings -- not the meeting between President Obama and the South American leaders, obviously wasn't at that. But I was present at the summit meeting, all of the plenary sessions."

"I thought President Obama did an excellent job of expressing the values, and priorities of the U.S. of America," he added. "I thought that he allowed ... a dialogue to take place in a good spirit to animate the room -- which I thought made the meetings productive. I think [it] made the U.S., took the U.S. to a higher plane than the Venezuelas of the world, and I think was very effective at moving the vast majorities of countries, reaffirming a very centrist position and very progressive position on the things that concern us: democracy, human rights, open markets, trade."

Harper concluded, "I know he got some criticism at home. But, you know, the U.S. is bigger than Venezuela in the end. The U.S. is the U.S., and I thought President Obama led in a way that was very effective at that conference."

TW: A nice segue from this morning's earlier post. Steve Harper hits the nail on the head: "the U.S. is bigger than Venezuela in the end". We can go into meetings and summits as a leviathan/bull in a china shop and try to steamroll everyone or we can move a little more subtly. The U.S. (inc. under Obama) bullies plenty of folks, we just do not need to do so every freaking time just to that insecure segment of our populace feel so.

ps: another quote from NBC: "...Why is Chavez fawning? Because Obama might be more popular in Venezuela than Chavez is right now"