United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited South America March 13. On her brief two-day trip, she visited Brazil and Chile. And while there are many countries she is not visiting, there is widespread acknowledgement that Argentina was snubbed.

The U.S. disapproval of the recently elected president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is fairly obvious, especially with this snubbed visit. Fernández de Kirchner assumed presidency after her husband, Nestor Kirchner, did not run for presidential reelection. In Argentina, a president may be elected to office for two four-year terms, but the two terms do not have to be consecutive.

So instead of running for two terms and remaining a lame duck in office for the second term, Kirchner did not run for reelection and allowed his wife to run.

Fernández de Kirchner won with an overwhelming mandate from the people. Mr. Kirchner’s approval ratings while in office were almost at 80 percent, so it is not surprising that Fernández de Kirchner won last fall. She was able to campaign abroad and still retain strong leads in the presidential race; the opposition was poorly organized and gained little ground.

So if Fernández de Kirchner is a fairly elected president of the second largest country in South America, why does the Bush administration dislike her? Isn’t Fernández de Kirchner a good example of stable democracy succeeding in a developing country? And hasn’t the Bush administration promoted democracy as one of its key foreign policy elements?

The trouble with Fernández de Kirchner is not that she is the wife of Mr. Kirchner and the two are manipulating the constitutional regulations of Argentina to maintain 12 years of non-lame-duck presidency. The United States, after all, supports a far less democratic regime in Colombia.

The trouble with the current Argentinean administration is that it is close friends with Hugo Chavez. The Kirchner Administrations were swept into office on a wave of anti-American sentiment after the U.S.-led International Monetary Fund (IMF) was blamed for the default of billions of Argentinean loans. The Kirchner administrations have been very leftist in policy and are closely allied with other anti-American governments of Latin America.

The Bush administration is having its difficulties with the Argentinean government, and it is showing its strong dislike for Argentina by not diplomatically paying the country a visit.

But this is a perplexing foreign policy approach. Simply because the outcome of an election is undesirable does not mean the U.S. government should condemn the newly elected democratic officials of that country. What kind of message does this send to the world regarding the highly touted moral pillar of democracy?

It is especially worrying since these countries not only have strong mandates from the people, but they are also winning by playing on the anti-American sentiments of their citizens. By denouncing these governments or not engaging them in a friendly, diplomatic manner, the United States further fuels the cause of these governments, as well as making it difficult for U.S. allies in different parts of the world to be proud of their alliances with the United States.

The United States seems to be sending this message to the world: We want you to be democratic, but only if that democratic outcome is the one we endorse.

[Reach reporter Sandley Chou at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]