Four years ago, when the first Obama administration was still hopeful about the prospects of resetting relationships with U.S. adversaries in the world, Venezuela was high on the list. “Eight years of isolation has resulted in the kinds of outreach that, I think, both you and I find troubling,” then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate in 2009. “Our belief is, if it hasn’t worked, why keep it going? Let’s see what else might be possible.” Things haven’t turned out quite as planned, but following the death of Hugo Chávez, the United States may get a new opportunity to improve one of its most frustrating relationships, and find out if a new way of operating might indeed be possible.

Some progress has been made, of course. The Obama administration learned some important lessons from the George W. Bush years. It wisely avoided becoming embroiled in rhetorical tit-for-tats — a game Chávez played with relish and of which he was the undisputed master. In 2006, for instance, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likened Chávez to Adolf Hitler. The Venezuelan president responded in kind at a rally in Caracas, “The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the U.S. president has no limits. I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W Bush.”

The Obama White House also seemed to accept the fact that, for all his faults and the problems he posed for the United States, Chávez was Venezuela’s legitimately elected president. Had there been another attempt to oust him, Obama officials would, one hopes, not have expressed undisguised glee, as the Bush White House did during the brief putsch of 2002.

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