Ortega's Victory: Another Administration Blunder?

Washington's public efforts to stop Nicaraguans from electing the Sandinista leader prompted a backlash against yanquiinterference.

The U.S. Congress wasn't the only place the Bush Administration suffered electoral embarrassment this week. In Nicaragua, cold-war bogeyman Daniel Ortega — whose Marxist Sandinista government had been an obsession of the Reagan Administration — was elected president again on Sunday despite frantic U.S. lobbying for his defeat. By most accounts, the yanqui politicking — which included a threat to cut off U.S. aid to impoverished Nicaragua if Ortega won — backfired miserably, actually helping boost the Sandinista leader to his first-round victory. That such U.S. pressure tends to work in favor of its opponents is a lesson Washington seems woefully unable to learn in a post-Cold War Latin America whose electorates have unexpectedly turned leftward in recent years.