Sunday, August 26, 2007

Clinton and Obama on Cuba

One of my main interests recently has been to read books on the history of Cuba. Ever since I took a course on 2oth Century Latin American History a few years ago, reading about the region has intrigued me. Cuba, in particular, only because of its distinctive history and that its internal state within the past 50 or so years has been a fascinating mystery.

An interesting little story is playing out among the top two Democratic front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary wants to go with the traditional, conservative, Bush-lite approach of a hard-line on Cuba, including prohibiting Cuban exiles from visiting their families in Cuba. Obama, on the other hand, wants reform in our policy towards Cuba, including permitting exiles to visiting their family, and perhaps beyond that. In a possibly genius move, he was able to coax Clinton's camp into stating that "she would continue the Bush administration's hard-line stance."

Something like this won't make me run to the polls next year in the primary, but I like some of Obama's stances on foreign policy, although that might be all I ever like from the man.

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