May 05, 2004, 9:16 a.m.
El Chris
When it comes to Latin America policy — and beyond — Senator Dodd is (almost) in a class by himself.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appears in the May 17, 2004, issue of National Review.

“Oh, I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town," sang Phil Ochs in the 1960s. "I believe in God and Senator Dodd and a-keepin' old Castro down."

The late folk singer was being facetious, of course. Like most of the counterculture, Ochs didn't really believe in a-keepin' old Castro down. But he would probably believe in today's Senator Dodd, the son of the man he targeted in his protest anthems back in the day. Christopher Dodd is all about a-proppin' old Castro up, along with many of the other left-wing rulers who have come to power in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dodd has built a career on attacking U.S. involvement in the Western Hemisphere, at least when there's a Republican in the White House. Most recently, he's been complaining about former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's unceremonious departure from power — and suggesting, without much evidence, that the Bush administration played a dark role in the ouster.

The first Senator Dodd — Thomas J. Dodd, also a Democrat — was not nearly as partisan. He was a leading anti-Communist who criticized JFK for ignoring Castro and supported Nixon during the Vietnam War. When voters rejected him in 1970, after fellow senators had censured him for misusing campaign funds, conservatives lost a useful foreign-policy ally.

The second Senator Dodd tries to honor his father's memory, at least when he accessorizes: He uses his dad's old desk, sits in his chair, and wears his pocket watch. Yet the two men couldn't be more different in their approaches to international affairs. "He was a strong anti-Communist and he was dead right," Dodd said of his pop some years ago. "But we have different ways of dealing with it."

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