The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

After Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez allegedly resigned in April, 2002 The New York Times declared, “Democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.” The U.S. media, following the Bush Administration’s lead, praised the shift in power and sidestepped the fact that Venezuela’s democratically elected President was ousted by a military coup. Was this simply an exception to the rule of U.S. support for democratic governments around the world? Or is Washington’s disregard for democracy so systemic that its own electoral process suffers? Florida’s 2000 election was fraught with technical errors and voter fraud. In any other country, the UN would have sent in election monitors. The hard evidence of this American-style coup was all over the foreign press, but largely ignored in the U.S.