Brazilian President Distances Himself From U.S. Campaign

Should the Planalto Palace* be looking towards the U.S. presidential candidates in the hopes of starting to propose partnerships for 2009-2012?

The Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told this blog, in New York, that Brasilia is making a point of staying far away from this dispute. “Lula is the president, they are candidates. It is not our place to seek them out. But, if they would like, Lula is always open to talking.”

The only Planalto-campaign bridge is the Brazilian Ambassador in Washington, Antonio Patriota, who stays in touch with the Latin America advisors for both campaigns, Daniel Restrepo (Obama), and Otto Reich (McCain). When I asked Restrepo, in Denver, which questions Obama had asked him about Brazil, he could not tell me any. Reich, in St. Paul, was more direct. He said Latin America was far from the top of McCain’s list of priorities, and that the countries that interest McCain in the region were the enemies, led by Venezuela.

There are those who think that Brazil should take greater advantage of the change in administration to start negotiating partnerships that could be accepted by the candidates’ administrations. Among them is columnist Clovis Rossi. “If I were Lula, I would call Barack and say, ‘Friend, let’s join forces in our common interests and your problems will be solved,’” he wrote in Folha, about a possible partnership regarding Brazilian sugar cane ethanol so that the U.S. could reduce its dependency on oil from the Middle East (Obama is against setting preferential trade terms for our ethanol, and is best friends with American corn ethanol producers, hence the need to try to sell him the idea).

Asked by a reporter from Agência Brasil if he would watch Friday’s debate, Amorim said that this would depend on what movies were on T.V. that night. “Last night Casablanca was on. I really like cinema,” he answered. Cinematographic good taste on the part of Amorim. I wonder what his electoral taste is. “Both have their own brand of personal charm,” he said about Obama and McCain.

Lula is cheering for Obama, according to our colleague Kennedy Alencar, because he thinks he is better prepared to take the U.S. out of the crisis.

*Brazilian Presidential Palace