By Joel Brinkley

HUGO Chavez, Venezuela’s flamboyant president, should be the object of pity. He has boxed himself in, trapped by hubris.

How did Venezuela find itself plagued with electricity shortages so severe that the government imposed blackouts nationwide for several hours each day? After all, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has among the world’s largest oil and natural gas reserves.

A hydroelectric dam on the Caroni River generates almost three-quarters of the nation’s electricity, but a drought has dropped the river’s water level below what the hydroelectric generator needs to function at full power. This set off the blackouts and a water shortage. That prompted the president to issue a decree: Venezuelans were no longer permitted to waste time singing in the shower. “No, folks, three minutes is more than enough. Three minutes is what I take, and I guarantee you I don’t end up smelling bad.”

The government called the electricity crisis an act of Mother Nature. I call it incompetence.

This wasn’t an earthquake, a hurricane or some other calamity that fell upon Venezuela with little notice. The water level had been dropping gradually for months. Everyone could see this crisis coming, but nothing effective was done to prepare.

Any other leader would have negotiated deals to buy new generators or purchased power from neighbors. Oh, I forgot. Chavez doesn’t have any friendly neighbors. Even so, both Colombia and Brazil did offer help. Their leaders certainly are hiding secret grins because their obnoxious neighbor needs assistance.

That’s where the hubris comes in. Elias Jaua, Venezuela’s vice president, recently refused Colombia’s offer to help. Chavez froths at the mouth every time he is forced to mention his arch enemy, Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia. For Chavez, Uribe ranks only slightly below his chief villain, the U.S. president. So, his vice president said he would rather wait for the rains to come again in the spring.

Last fall, Chavez also was relying on the rains to save him — actually to save his people. You can be sure there are no blackouts at the presidential palace.

Chavez tried seeding the clouds, trying to persuade them to disgorge some moisture. “Any cloud that comes my way, I’ll hurl a lightning bolt at it,” the president declared. “Tonight, I am going out to bombard.” It didn’t work.

With all the oil revenue, Chavez could have built new power plants that run on Venezuela’s natural gas. But, he has been using most of the cash to buy votes. Venezuela subsidizes gasoline and electricity rates for its people. A gallon of gasoline costs 12 cents, the lowest price in the world.

That helps explain why the nation’s economy, like its electric grid, is on the verge of collapse. Inflation runs at 25 percent, the highest in Latin America, and the nation remains in a stubborn recession. In January, Chavez devalued the currency, the bolivar, from 2.15 to the dollar up to 4.30. Suddenly, money was worth half the value of the day before.

Part of the problem is that Chavez literally is running out of money. Venezuela’s export is oil, and production has been plummeting — nearly 30 percent over the last decade.

This is not because the nation is running out of crude. Chavez fired the professionals who ran the oil business and installed cronies. Oil-production equipment is failing. The oil infrastructure, like the rest of the country, is falling apart. Chavez has run Venezuela’s economy into the ground.

To fix the energy problem, he asked Cuba — another nation that is falling to pieces — to help. But Cuba, too, has rolling blackouts. Only cut-rate oil from Venezuela keep its electricity grid alive.

Angry and frustrated students rallied this month to protest inflation, blackouts, water and food shortages, economic deprivation, the continent’s highest crime rate and Chavez’s dictatorial rule. Police fired water cannons and plastic bullets at the youths.

Is that a man worthy of pity? Well, at the very least, he has a tin ear. As all of this went on, his press department churned out adoring press releases and assorted commentary, including one titled “Is the U.S. Economic Model a Failure?”

Joel Brinkley, a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is a professor of journalism at Stanford University. E-mail: brinkley@foreign-matters.com.