In a rare display of unintended bipartisanship, Cuban-American US Senators
Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) vocally criticized
President Obama's announcement to normalize relations with the Communist Castro
regime in Cuba.
“I think it stinks,” declared Menendez. “Obama is the worst negotiator”,
Rubio retorted.
Both Senators should not fault the President for discussing comprehensive
changes to the five-decade Cuban embargo, which Congress has peeled back
piecemeal over the last few years.
Normalization of trade and diplomatic relations always benefits free
countries. Furthermore, open trade undermines tyrannical regimes. For example,
the world witnessed this powerful transition when USSR’s last premier, Mikhail
Gorbachev, reached out to the United States and Western Europe. Because
Gorbachev desperately needed to revive his country’s flagging economy,
President Reagan understood that the Soviet Union was crumbling from within. He
knew fully well what United Kingdom’s conservative Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher had asserted: “The problem with socialism is that governments run out
of other people’s money.”
Without diminishing their nation’s defenses, Reagan, Thatcher (and
indirectly Pope John Paul II) shared freedom of trade, press, and religion with
the Soviet people, who then brought down the Communist Soviet regime. Similar
outreach will help the Cuban people to end Castro’s dictatorship, too.
However, Senators Rubio and Menendez should fault President Obama for his
unilateral, even dictatorial pretensions. Having ignored and attempted to
rewrite federal law on health care and immigration, Obama must submit to
Congressional approval. Before easing tensions with Cuba, the President should
normalize relations with Congress.