And, boy, Roger Cohen offer up one heck of a salute in his New York Times column today. After congratulating Chavez for accepting defeat with grace, Cohen writes:

The United States might ponder those words -- not just because of what happened in the presidential election of 2000; not just because the arithmetic of voting has proved unpalatable in Palestine; not just because of the past U.S.-abetted trampling of elected Latin American leaders in Chile and elsewhere -- but because democracy was alive and vital in Venezuela on Sunday in a way foreign to President Bush's America.

And so on for several hundred more words. It obviously never registers with Cohen that could Chavez have stolen the election he would have. He didn't because the real margin was likely far greater than the 51-49 number which is rumored to have been the result of a face saving deal with the opposition. Instead, Cohen accepts that tally with absolute faith when in fact conceding graciously and appearing to be a good democrat may have been Chavez's only choice.

Chavez craves world respect, not as much as he craves power, but enough so that he is more than willing to turn a defeat into a propaganda victory -- and at least in this case of one self-tortured Times columnist, mission accomplished.

But just so that you don't think Cohen is a Chavez apologist, he offers up these qualifications:

Let's be clear: Chavez is a caudillo. His "socialismo" equals "Hugoismo." He's a menace. He's about to introduce a new currency, the strong bolivar, with monetary policy in chaos, inflation rising toward 20 percent, and his crony bankers pocketing millions by arbitraging the disparity between the official and black-market rates.

Crime and drug-trafficking are thriving. He's still a believer in building socialism through local councils for which the Russian translation would be "Soviets." He accused his opponents of a "Pyrrhic victory" and vowed not to change a "comma" of his rejected reforms.

But because Chavez isn't a complete maniac, Cohen salutes him and concludes this nauseating column by saying that what happened in Venezuela this week offers "a civic example from which Bush's battered and blathering democracy can learn."

Please. The only lesson here is one we already knew: That since the days of Stalin, lefty columnists have never met a socialist dictator they couldn't learn to like.