Obama mesmerizes some Cubans in Miami, but Castro no so much

Miami Herald:

T he candidate did not wear a guayabera. He did not endlessly stroke the Cuban ego. And he did not pretend to know everything.

Barack Obama stood Friday beneath the banner of the Cuban American National Foundation and delivered an address notable not just for what it contained, but for what it did not.

''I won't pretend to know everything about Cuba,'' Obama said at the beginning of a speech that touched on the island and the United States' policy throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Later, with a smile, he added: ``The easy thing to do for an American politician is to come down to Miami, talk tough and go back to Washington and nothing changes.''

In a town where political flattery is cheaper than a Versailles cafecito, Obama refused to indulge in the old platitudes.

His speech -- delivered to a cross-section of the supportive, the skeptical and the plain curious -- broke the pattern of condescension that has defined so many of these events in the past.

For once, a politician came to Miami and spoke to and about Cuban Americans as if they comprised a diverse community of thinking adults, instead of a single-celled organism.

The crowd rewarded him with several standing ovations, the longest of which came after Obama promised to lift the 2004 Bush travel restrictions.

''There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. That's why I will immediately allow unlimited family travel to Cuba and remittances,'' he said, and the rest of his reference to mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, was drowned out in whistles and cheers.

He also repeated his promise to talk with Raúl Castro without preconditions, but with a plan: ``We will set a clear agenda.''

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I think this writer is like many who are in the tank for Obama already. Castro called the speech a formula for hunger according to Reuters.

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"Obama's speech can translate into a formula of hunger for the nation (Cuba), the remittances like alms and the visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable lifestyle that he sustains.

"How is the very grave problem of the food crisis going to be confronted? Grains must be distributed among human beings, domestic animals and fish, which year by year are smaller and more scarce in the over-exploited seas," Castro said. "It's not easy to produce meat from gas and oil."

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Castro demonstrates the kind of ignorance that has made Cuba so poor. Oil and gas have made farming more productive than people dreamed just a few generations ago. Not only is fertilizer produced from it, but machinery can make farms more productive for growing animal feed as well as food for humans.

It could be that Obama's speech persuaded some Cubans to vote for him this fall. It is a shame to see people who fled control freak economic in Cuba embrace an American control freak agenda pushed by Democrats. Many Cubans have become prosperous be exercising their talents in a free market economy. I guess if Obama can talk them into giving that up for more government intervention and higher taxes maybe he can talk Castro into freeing the Cubans, but I would not bet on it.