Who's The Dictator?

So in common American parlance, Hugo Chavez is the devious dictator while Vladimir Putin is the establishing G8 leader. Yet yesterday, both of them held elections, and that alone is enough to upset that conventional wisdom. Even more so when you realize that Chavez' election was a legitimate balloting which he could lose, while Putin's election was grossly unfair.

Now, Chavez is barred from running for President again in 2012, but of course he can use similar means to Putin by trying to install a puppet government that he controls behind the scenes. The point is that he'll have to try. And his concession speech sounded almost humble.

Humbled by his first electoral defeat ever, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.

"I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense," he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent [...]

"I wouldn't have wanted that Pyrrhic victory," he said, suggesting a small margin wouldn't have been enough of a mandate.

I'm not trying to be a propagandist for Chavez, but the distinction between him and Putin here is stark. By contrast, the Russian dictator dismissed all charges of a stolen election:

But Putin and his allies praised the result as an overwhelming endorsement of his leadership and policies.

"Of course it's a sign of trust," Putin said in televised remarks. "Russians will never allow the nation to take a destructive path, as happened in some other ex-Soviet nations."

America might want to re-think the labels it puts on other world leaders.