Chavez UN speech backfires

NY Times:

Venezuela’s populist leader, Hugo Chávez, earned giggles and guffaws at the United Nations last month with his mass appeal diatribe ridiculing President Bush as the devil. Mr. Chávez said he could still smell the telltale scent of sulfur on the General Assembly rostrum where Mr. Bush had spoken the day before.

Now it appears that Mr. Chávez’s histrionic performance — styled to win him support from the United States’ many detractors at the United Nations — may have cost his country the seat on the Security Council that he has conducted a global campaign to win.

Developing nations make up a vast majority of the 192 countries in the General Assembly and generally warm to rants against Washington. But they also value the United Nations as a place where their voices can be heard in a dignified setting, and both supporters and detractors here say Mr. Chávez may have miscalculated in turning it into his bully pulpit.

Delegates said they also feared that the performance demonstrated the kind of behavior Venezuela might bring to the orderly confines of the Council chamber.

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It is rather ironice that the speech did the opposite of what he intended in an organization that has been hostile to the US in recent years. Sometimes too much is just too much. The US should watch those voting for Chavez very closely. They are throwing in with an enemy and may have to be treated as such.