There is Venezuela Consensus: Trump Not Following It

We have reached a point of truly remarkable consensus on Venezuela. I have two views below. One is from a conservative former Bush administration official. The other is from a former editor at TeleSur, the media mouthpiece for Hugo Chávez. You can probably tell which is which, but their messages are so similar.

Here's one:

Stalin González, a top opposition lawmaker, suggested earlier this month that a transitional government should include representatives of the ruling “chavismo” movement and military leadership to guarantee the political stability needed to hold new elections. “We need to give space to the chavismo that is not Maduro because we need political stability,” he said. It is important to remember that not all officials who follow Chávez are crooks or human rights abusers.

Here's the other:

Governing institutions should not be confused with people, and solidarity with states behaving badly only discourages the self-criticism that a genuinely revolutionary movement should crave. In Venezuela, this encourages the same self-defeating behavior, escalated since the defeat of 2015, that has led a majority of Venezuelans to feel their government does not act with their best interests in mind.

The consensus is that Venezuelans deserve a free and fair (and inclusive!) presidential election and that unilateral action by the United States is counter-productive. Obviously their views diverge on whether military force should ever be considered a serious option. But that is a huge consensus from polar ideological opposites.

This is why it is so frustrating to hear that Mike Pence is going to Colombia so that he can berate the Maduro and the Venezuelan military some more. The Trump administration seems to be oblivious to the consensus and so acts completely against it. This is a "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" kind of thing. There is unheard of political consensus. Don't screw it up in a misguided attempt to claim all the credit.