The Bush administration's policies towards Latin America have contributed to the dramatic populist shift in the region since he took office. Bolstering governments of the region against the spread of the leftist menace as the Bush team did in its early years appears, in retrospect, stale, a holdover strategy from the Reagan administration. The chaotic reception President Bush received, for example, at the 4th Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 2004 was a pivotal moment in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations.

But we have the benefits of hindsight. In defense of the President, post-September 11th the eyes of the administration were almost entirely focused on the Middle East and its immediate surrounds. And although the 43rd President revisited the Latin American relationship early last year, the damage, in the intervening years, had already been done.

The pendulum swings. Signaling a seismic shift in American foreign policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean in a possible Obama administration, the junior Senator from Illinois today emphasized a "New Alliance of the Americas" in a speech in Miami. Challenging the present course in hemispheric strategy, the Senator curiously invoked the common "colonial" narrative of American history and tied it to the similar legacies of Latin America and the Caribbean. The speech was particularly bold. No foreign policy conversation on U.S.-Latin American affairs can exclude mention of Hugo Chavez, the proverbial 800-lb gorilla in the hemisphere. Invoking a common colonial history in Miami was a statement of hemispheric solidarity, suggesting Obama's own unique biography and aimed at distancing Latin American governments from the orbit of Venezuelan influence. Probably no other American politician could have carried off such a statement other than the Hawaiian-born son of a Kenyan immigrant and a single mother from Kansas.

Drawing on his own experiences as the child of an immigrant, Senator Obama told the crowd:

"Miami's promise of liberty and opportunity has drawn generations of immigrants to these shores, sometimes with nothing more than the clothes on their back. It was a similar hope that drew my own father across an ocean, in search of the same promise that our dreams need not be deferred because of who we are, what we look like, or where we come from.

"Here, in Miami, that promise can join people together. We take common pride in a vibrant and diverse democracy, and a hard-earned prosperity. We find common pleasure in the crack of the bat, in the rhythms of our music, and the ease of voices shifting from Spanish or Creole or Portuguese to English."

Earlier in the week, Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was in Little Havana. There, too, the subject was U.S. Latin American and Caribbean relations. Using a Cuban folklorico band as warm up, the Senator from Arizona reiterated his opposition to the Castro government and affirmed the 46-year-long trade embargo. Cuba's ailing former leader Fidel Castro, in his regular "Reflections of Fidel" column published in Communist Party newspaper Granma, attacked McCain and the President. ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper neatly summed up this little bit of political theater in the headline to Political Punch, "Castro Attacks McCain, No Doubt to McCain's Delight." Charmed, I'm sure.