The Guy Knows His PR

After a radical cleric threatens to kill him, Hugo Chavez comes right back and becomes the world's first politician to offer a solution to high gas prices:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.

"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader told reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba.

Chavez did not say how Venezuela would go about providing gasoline to poor communities. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 gas stations in the United States.

I think Chavez just wants to be left alone by the US. The CIA already tried to toss him out once. But after this flap, he can now claim the mantle of martyrdom as a man under attack from the imperialist gringos. And his raised profile allows him to reach America's working class with statements like this. Two days ago they wouldn't have known who Chavez was. Now he's the only guy out there offering to fill up their tank for less.

Thanks, Pat. Real helpful.

UPDATE: Digby gets at something I've been trying to formulate here. Chavez is not gassing his own people, he's not threatening the region militarily, he's not even (by virtue of his winning elections) a dictator. He's just a populist leftist, who's admittedly done some regrettable actions regarding state secrecy and restraining political freedom.

But America's problem with him is an economic one; he won't buckle to the free-market capitalist hordes, he won't give them the oil revenues they want. And by offering cheap gas in America, he's cutting them out of the deal.