We thought it was problematic when Gov. Charlie Crist appointed George LeMieux, his former chief of staff and campaign manager, to replace the eminently replaceable Sen. Mel Martinez, who quit while he was behind. We feared that we would be getting Senator Surrogate. Those fears have been realized.
For a political appointee ostensibly trying to disprove that he’s the governor’s seat-warming lackey, LeMieux has been sending incongruous signals. He co-hosted a Crist fundraiser recently in Washington and formed a political action committee that Crist (and LeMieux) will be able to tap into. His stands on key issues, including health care reform (“rationing”) opposition, seem designed to help the ideology-challenged Crist in his increasingly competitive senatorial primary with conservative poster boy Marco Rubio.
And now LeMieux is messing with foreign policy as a further extension of political payback. Less than 10 weeks on the job, he has morphed into enough of an insider to block a bill and a nomination – the upshot of which could potentially help Crist with the conservative, South Florida Cuban vote.
The bill would reduce funding for the ineffectual, cost-ineffective TV and Radio Marti, which produces pro-American, broadcast messages to Cuba. Which are, of course, ultimately jammed. The nomination is that of Thomas A. Shannon Jr. as U.S. ambassador to Brazil. The exile community is known to look askance at Shannon, who was considered open-minded on Cuba when he was assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric affairs under President George W. Bush.
The Shannon implications are serious.
Brazil is a hemispheric heavyweight, an important hedge against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and an increasingly major global player. That’s one of the reasons Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in Brazil last week visiting with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva. This is no time for Charlie Crist’s lotion boy to play geopolitical grown-up.
Brazil’s also a big trading partner of the U.S. – and Boeing is said to be less than pleased that the ambassadorial delay, which can be interpreted as a diplomatic insult, could jeopardize its $7.5-billion fighter-jet deal with Brazil. It’s hardly coincidental that LeMieux received a come-to-Jesus letter from nine former assistant secretaries of state urging him to lift his opposition to Shannon and not risk damaging U.S. relations with Latin America.
LeMieux needs to get his priorities in order, especially if he expects to run on his own and challenge Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012. Country needs to come first, no matter how much pressure is applied by self-serving, hard-line Cuba lobbies, for whom a Cold War vendetta still trumps the best interest of the U.S. – and Florida.