On the way back from the President’s latest European excursion, CNN White House reporter Ed Henry tweeted that Obama “joked” that he might divert Air Force One to South America so he could visit his buddy Hugo Chavez.
And that brings up something we’ve been wondering about since we saw President Obama greet the outgoing President of Brazil at last week’s G-20 meetings:
Why does President Obama reserve his special soul brother handshakes only for South American socialists?
We’ve searched through thousands of photos of Obama shaking hands with world leaders and can only find two in which he does the bro’ shake.
The first was with Venezuela strongman Hugo Chavez at Obama’s first U.N. conference back in 2009.
The second was with Brazil’s outgoing communist President Luis Inacio Lula de Silva at the previously-mentioned G-20 meeting in Seoul.
Scores of other world leaders, apparently not hip enough to exchange bro’ shakes with Obama or, perhaps, just not politically-attuned enough, just received the regular, boring kind of handshakes heads of state normally exchange.
We can’t find any photos of President Obama shaking hands with Raul Castro, Evo Morales or Daniel Ortega, but if and when he does we assume they’ll receive the same show of unity and brotherhood that their South American socialist brothers received.
