What is Obama’s position on Cuba?
- Obama has advocated easing the Bush-imposed ban on Cuban-Americans visiting the island and sending money to their relatives. He makes a broader case for a new Cuba policy, arguing that capitalism, trade and travel will help break the regime’s stranglehold on the country and help open things up.Clinton immediately disagreed, firmly supporting the current policy. This places her in the strange position of arguing, in effect, that her husband’s Cuba policy was not hard-line enough. But this is really not the best way to understand Clinton’s position. In all probability, she actually agrees with Obama’s stand. She is just calculating that it would anger Cuban-Americans in Florida and New Jersey.
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This is not naiveté. Obama’s position on Cuba is not all hope. Most of the older generation of Cuban-Americans are hard-line Republicans anyway, so it’s probably pointless courting them. And the younger ones—under 45 or so—are far less wedded to the punitive approach and symbolic battles of the past. So Obama is taking a calculated risk that the time is right.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/107578
