Jim DeMint

Finally, President Obama's Latin America team has its leader. Six months after his nomination, Arturo Valenzuela was sworn in on Nov. 10 as the top U.S. diplomat in the region: head of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department. Now Obama's "new chapter of engagement" between the United States and its southern neighbors can begin in earnest.

U.S. policy toward Latin America is suffering from a lack of experience at the top. Neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden or anyone in the cabinet could honestly be considered a Latin Americanist. And Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's nominee for assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs -- the top diplomatic post in the region -- remains unconfirmed, the victim of a Republican senator's cheap political maneuvering.