Fascism by Madeleine Albright

IN SEPTEMBER 1999, BILL CLINTON AND I SAT DOWN AT THE UN with the ebullient, youngish leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. Chávez had been elected president the previous December. In June, he had rung the closing bell at capitalism's highest altar, the New York Stock Exchange, then visited the Washington Post, where he took care to distance himself from "irresponsible populism. " He assured everyone that he wasn't an ideologue; instead he flaunted the plumage of a visionary and promised to restore luster to his country by rescuing it from a nightmare of stagnation and debt.

Chávez had a face made for smiling. Words gushed out of him like water, and the emotions behind them centered on the poor. Venezuela sat above a significant fraction of the world's petroleum reserves, yet the gap between its wealthier citizens and the impoverished majority had been widening. Chávez vowed to change that. He told us of his plan for an array of oil-financed funds to help families with low incomes gain access to food, shelter, health care, job training, and schools. He wanted to diversify the nation's economy, attract foreign investment, and transform the government into a true servant of the people. Clinton, one of the few who could match Chávez word for word, was clearly intrigued by him; so was I. Here, we dared hope, was a young leader with passion who wanted also to be a problem solver, someone who had learned from earlier mistakes and sought to earn the world's respect.