COLUMN-Voting on Chavez, rock star of politics: Bernd Debusmann

(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - If you "Google" Hugo Chavez your search returns around 7 million references, more than twice as many as for the Latin leader with the next highest number, Fidel Castro.

The presidents of Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia trail behind.

Making headlines wherever he goes, looking for confrontation wherever he can get it, hurling insults at fellow presidents, the left-wing, anti-American populist has become the political equivalent of a rock star, complete with a predilection for outrageous behaviour and a craving for attention.

As with many a celebrity, the Google figures reflect notoriety as much (or possibly more) as performance and achievement.

(Britney Spears, for comparison, yields more than 25 million results).

The globe-trotting Chavez is getting a lot of attention, except from the man he has been trying for years to goad into responding to insults: George W. Bush.

The U.S. president has ignored invective ranging from "the devil" and "donkey" to "drunkard" and "genocidal assassin." Bush doesn't even mention Chavez by name.

"We think there's little that irritates Chavez as much as that silence," says a private sector political consultant involved in shaping U.S. policy towards Venezuela.

"It deprives him of the confrontation on which he thrives. He wants a mano a mano."

Not responding does not mean Washington has abandoned opposition to Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" and his attempts to forge an anti-American alliance in Latin America tied together by trade pacts and oil deals.

But it means that those in charge of Venezuela at the State Department think that dealing with Chavez the way the U.S. dealt with Castro would be counter-productive.

More than 40 years of unrelenting and noisy U.S. hostility to Castro, complete with a trade embargo on Cuba, gave its now ailing leader a convenient excuse to blame all problems on Washington.

While the Bush administration, preoccupied by the war in Iraq and the Middle East, has paid little attention to Latin America, some officials here feel Chavez is digging his own grave and that after almost nine years of turbulent rule, his popularity at home is fading.



BLACK-AND-WHITE VIEWS

To what extent that assessment is correct will be evident next Sunday when Venezuelans vote in a referendum on far-reaching constitutional reforms that would allow Chavez to run for elections as often as he likes, control currency reserves, muzzle the media and place party loyalists over elected regional officials.

The reforms would formally declare Venezuela a Socialist state, the second in the Western Hemisphere after Cuba.

In an irony of history, Chavez took a leaf from the book of his nemesis Bush -- "if you are not with us, you are against us" -- by presenting the referendum as a referendum on himself.

"It's black and white. A vote against the reform is a vote against Chavez," he told state television.

One of those who have come out against him is Raul Baduel, a retired general who helped return Chavez to power after the unsuccessful 2002 coup against him. Baduel, who retired in July, described the constitutional reforms as "a second coup."

Coup or reform, what's next after the referendum? If he wins, the fragmented, disorganised and incompetent opposition -- much of which is as given to a black-and-white view of Venezuelan politics as Chavez -- is certain to cry foul.

That's what happened in 2004, when the country voted in a referendum to recall Chavez. He won comfortably, by 59 percent, in a poll monitored and deemed fair by international observers.

The opposition's refusal to recognise the results damaged its credibility and hardened the political fronts -- yet again.

If Chavez loses, he will still have another six years to push his oil-financed "21st century socialism" and look for outside forces to blame for its failings.

Despite his oft-repeated warnings of U.S. plans for an invasion, a rallying cry for pro-Chavez unity, that is extremely unlikely to happen. (You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters com) (Editing by Sean Maguire)