McCain Puts Political Expediency Ahead of Reason on Cuba

By DeWayne Wickham

When it comes to Cuba, John McCain is all wrong — and Barack Obama is just half right.

In a speech he gave last week on Cuban Independence Day, McCain — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — tied himself tightly to a failed Cold War policy. If elected president, McCain said, he’ll continue the Bush administration’s heartless restrictions on trade, travel and money transfers to Cuba. “I will not passively await the day when the Cuban people enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy. It is in our national interest to support their aspirations and oppose those of the Castro regime,” he proclaimed.

It’s McCain’s political interests, not the nation’s, that drive his position on Cuba. As it did in 2000, the outcome of this year’s presidential election in Florida could determine who will be the next occupant of the Oval Office. But by taking this position, McCain — who once had a well-earned reputation for being a straight talker — sank deeper in the bog of political bluster.

McCain’s tough talk was an appeal for support from those Cuban-Americans who think the economic embargo against the Castro government that was imposed nearly 50 years ago still makes sense. It was an act of political genuflection, the kind of groveling that a long list of Republican and Democratic presidential wannabes have done in hopes of winning the backing of Cuban-American voters in South Florida.

Ironically, it was McCain and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who led the push in the ’90s for an end to the economic embargo against Vietnam and the normalizing of diplomatic ties with that one-time U.S. enemy. Back then, McCain, who had spent 5 1/2 years as a POW in North Vietnam, didn’t demand that Hanoi hold free elections, release political prisoners, legalize political parties and labor unions, and allow media freedom — as he does of Cuba.

He understood that the United States would have more leverage to bring about those changes if it opened diplomatic relations with Vietnam and permitted Americans to travel freely to that communist country. But this year, with Cuba, reason has given way to political ambition.

In his speech, McCain attacked Obama for saying he would hold unconditional talks with Cuba’s leadership and allow Cuban-Americans to travel there and send unlimited financial help to their relatives who remain on that Caribbean island.

Four years ago, Bush tightened the travel embargo, limiting Cuban-Americans to one visit to Cuba every three years and allowing them to send just $1,200 a year to immediate family members in Cuba.

Obama’s position only looks enlightened when compared with this draconian policy, which McCain has committed to continue. But by any other rational measure, Obama’s position is a lite version of a bad policy. In a political sense, what Obama offers as a new Cuba policy is a reduced version of a policy that has been in place for nearly 50 years and hasn’t worked. It’s an improvement over the Bush-McCain policy, but falls short of the new politics thatObama espouses on the campaign trail.

I’ve been to Cuba 10 times in the past eight years. I’ve talked with government officials and dissidents. I’ve met with teachers and barbers, cab drivers and street hustlers, religious and gay rights activists. I’ve gone shopping with many who struggle to make ends meet and spent time in the homes of a broad range of Cubans.

I know that most Cubans want a better life, more personal freedom and money to provide for their family and to purchase consumer goods that Americans take for granted. But all the Cubans I’ve met love their country and don’t want to leave it. They want a better life there, not in Florida.

I think this country should give Cuba the same uninhibited chance we’ve given Vietnam to prove it can deliver a better life to its people.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.