Abuse of Power

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

On Feb. 2, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will celebrate a decade in power. But it is unlikely that a majority of his compatriots will toast his long run. In the latest referendum on Mr. Chávez -- Venezuela's gubernatorial elections, on Nov. 24 -- government-anointed candidates won most of the country's 22 states, but the six challengers to chavismo who managed to prevail will now head some of the country's most populous states as well as the capital district of Caracas. A tally of total votes cast that day shows that more Venezuelans opposed the Chávez machine than endorsed it.

Mr. Chávez came to power in 1999 promising to lift the Venezuelan underclass out of its misery, but he has failed badly so far: The country, in fact, is less democratic under Mr. Chávez, decidedly poorer and immensely more crime-ridden. Yet the Chávez narrative that we have been told in recent years is almost always a triumphant one. As Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan show in "The Threat Closer to Home," many journalists, nongovernmental organizations, American politicians and Hollywood stars have fallen in love with Mr. Chávez, treating him as a savior to the poor and tribune of the people. Messrs. Schoen and Rowan depict him, persuasively, as something quite different: a dangerous demagogue. They are less persuasive when it comes to recommending specific American policies for containing Mr. Chávez's ambitions.

In its 2007 index, Transparency International, an organization that ranks countries from the least corrupt (Denmark, at No. 1) to the most (Somalia, at No. 179), put Venezuela far down on the list, at No. 162. More disturbing is Mr. Chávez's growing authoritarianism. Just after he was first elected -- as Messrs. Schoen and Rowan remind us -- a pro-Chávez constituent assembly rewrote the constitution in a way that weakened the checks and balances on his power. From there Mr. Chávez wrested control of the judiciary and the national electoral council, the body charged with the electoral process. Then he began rigging elections.

A crucial vote came on Aug. 15, 2004, when Venezuela held a referendum on whether to recall Mr. Chávez from the presidency. Polling places were suddenly relocated for 2.6 million voters (mostly in areas known to oppose Mr. Chávez and favor the recall), and unaudited electronic machines were used to tally the votes. To the American polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, monitoring the recall effort -- Douglas Schoen, the co-author of "The Threat Closer to Home," is one of the firm's partners -- the heavy voter turnout suggested "dissatisfaction with the incumbent." And the firm's exit polling in Venezuela confirmed the hunch: Mr. Chávez, it predicted, would lose, 59% to 41%.

In the wee hours of the following day, the head of Venezuela's electoral council announced the vote results as Mr. Chávez's government had tallied them: They were the mirror image of what Penn, Schoen and Berland had found: 59% in favor of keeping the president and 41% backing the recall. Despite a complete lack of transparency -- and good reasons for believing that governmental pressure had affected vote-counting -- international "observer" Jimmy Carter blessed the result, and Mr. Chávez remained in office.

How does Mr. Chavez deploy his increasing power? Among much else, Messrs. Schoen and Rowan observe, he uses Venezuela's oil wealth to fund militant political projects in neighboring countries and to buy K Street propaganda in Washington. He makes alliances with Islamic fundamentalists and Colombian rebels. He confiscates property and takes over whole companies and industries, crushing the private sector and thwarting political pluralism.

The true nature of Mr. Chávez's rule -- as opposed to the fairy-tale version we so often hear -- is neatly presented in "The Threat Closer to Home," and the authors' narrative is heavily footnoted. (I must quibble with one of their claims, however. Messrs. Schoen and Rowan say that The Wall Street Journal editorial board, in 2003, "upbraided" Jack Kemp for his business relationship with the Chávez government. In fact, the editorial board did not declare itself on the subject; Mr. Kemp was taken to task in a column I wrote for the Journal.) America must act to oppose Mr. Chavez, the authors go on to say, but they do not suggest the sorts of steps that would go to the heart of his power: e.g. ending the "war on drugs" or stopping the devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

No, what the authors have in mind starts with . . . contrition. The U.S., you see, has harmed Venezuela over the years with Cold War intervention, corporate dominance and cultural arrogance. "We are largely unaware," Messrs. Schoen and Rowan write, "of how Latin Americans at home feel about our government's overbearing influence in the wrong ways." (And yet, a few pages later, we are told that America has a 70% approval rating among Venezuelans.) The U.S. might be forgiven, the authors say, if we were to institute something they call The Alliance of the Americas, an effort that would "invest in the tools of wealth creation for the 200 million poor people of Latin America." In such a way, inequality will end, Venezuelans will become productive and the lion will lay down with the lamb.

The idea behind this proposal is that Venezuela, one of the richest countries in the hemisphere, needs a Marshall Plan. But this is absurd. Venezuela's pain has nothing to do with a shortage of resources; it has everything to do with an absence of property rights, fair competition and equality under the law. Venezuelans have been stripped of their rights not by Americans but by Venezuelan politicians. Mr. Chávez is only the latest, and perhaps the worst, in a long line of corrupt and abusive leaders. Fortunately a good number of Venezuelans have figured this out. They are known as the "ni-ni" because they back neither Mr. Chávez nor his opposition. Instead, they are waiting for the arrival of a Venezuelan political class that will, at long last, accept democratic limits on its own power.

Ms. O'Grady writes the Journal's weekly Americas column.