Does Hugo Chavez have us over a barrel?

Alarmingly, Chavez is also building support in the U.S. He subsidizes winter oil available for up to 2 million American families in 17 states and promotes his revolution through photo-ops with celebrities such as Sean Penn and Naomi Campbell and dealings with politicians such as Jimmy Carter and Joseph P. Kennedy II. He has retained consulting firms connected to such politicians as Jack Kemp and Rudy Giuliani.

Chavez has succeeded because he was grossly underestimated by his opponents. It's happening even now. The Bush administration has ignored Chavez in the hope that he would go away or that his neighbors would isolate him. But he has done just the opposite and isolated the U.S. within the Americas.

The U.S. has been searching in vain for Osama bin Laden and weapons of mass destruction while another threat has been lurking in our backyard for years. The solution would have been to pull the rug from under Chavez before he could do it to us -- to plan for a U.S. economy sans Venezuelan oil. It's too late for that now; our economic state is too precarious.

What we need to do is work toward decreasing our dependence on foreign oil generally and the oil of hostile governments specifically. And we must engage in a Marshall Plan of our own to help Latin America rise out of the poverty and despair that catapults populist despots like Chavez into office.

When democracy comes before economic development, you get a Chavez. When our lust for oil comes before sound foreign policy, you get a recession.