Cuba

If there were any doubts that these are desperate times for anti-Castro hard-liners, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida has put them to rest.

The ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ros-Lehtinen would have us believe that lifting the 1961 ban on travel to Cuba would somehow pose a major threat to U.S. national security. How? By making Cuba a haven for criminals and enabling the Castro regime to turn tourists into traitors.

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.

At the Summit of the Americas in April, President Obama made it clear he believes U.S.-Cuba relations can move "in a new direction." The United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere, he argued, must leave behind the "false choice" between complete isolation through a 47-year-old embargo or open engagement, which would coddle a dictator.

The countries need a third option, and Obama's vision provides a welcome alternative to the current situation: divided opinions in the hemisphere and no change on the island.

The signal has been sent: The U.S. hard line is over. The Obama administration's decision to allow Cuban-Americans unlimited travel and remittances to Cuba just four days before the Summit of the Americas is no sea change but a symbolic act that will warm up the crowd and, with all hope, enable leaders meeting in Trinidad and Tobago to focus on the even more urgent issue at hand -- the financial crisis cum global economic crisis and its effects on the poor.

The highly respected former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, co-chairs of the 2006 Iraq Study Group, recently praised President Barack Obama's realistic and pragmatic approach to international relations. In an interview with Jim Lehrer on public television, they said Obama listens, understands what you say and then asks: "How do I get it done?"

A hard-line on Cuba has been a permanent fixture in Washington, around longer than many of the city’s monuments. Yet, come January 20th, President Obama can begin to shift foreign policy away from ideological certitude and toward constructive engagement abroad by softening U.S. policy toward the island. What a difference one election cycle can make.