Miami Herald's horrible website exposed again

Continuing with my post yesterday, exposing more self-evident flaws in the the Miami Herald and its website
Today is Wednesday September 12th, 2007. The following "Correction" appeared last Friday for a story that had run the previous day, the 6th, a date well within the Herald's own rules for keeping a story on its website for 7 days before sending it to archives.
(There, of course, you get to pay for the privilege of finding it. Minus the photos, graphs and other helpful info you'd be able to see if you were looking for a story on the Baltimore Sun's website, for example.)
Unlike the corrections that run on the website of the New York Times, and on p. 2A of the actual paper, the Herald's website doesn't provide a link back to the original story with the appended correction. It's a small thing, but lile so much with the Herald, its speaks volumes about its inherent reader unfriendliness.

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/228480.html
Miami Herald
September 7, 2007
An article on Page 3B of the Metro & State section Thursday wrongly attributed a quote from Miami-Dade School Board member Evelyn Greer to another member. The article should have noted that Greer said: "It's a very interesting phenomenon in this state. People don't want to pay taxes, but they want the best in services."

So, if you had wanted to find the original story on the Herald's website, the subject of the correction, which appeared in the paper only 5 days old before, you'd get the following: it's disappeared.
What follows is exactly what appears on the website after I typed in my query.

Recent News
Keywords: "Evelyn Greer"

Pub Date: Past 7 Days Wed, Sep 12, 2007 Tue, Sep 11, 2007 Mon, Sep 10, 2007 Sun, Sep 9, 2007 Sat, Sep 8, 2007 Fri, Sep 7, 2007 Thu, Sep 6, 2007
We didn't find any News containing "Evelyn Greer". Please refine your query and try again.

Suggestions:
Check your spelling
Try different words
Try words that mean the same thing
Try fewer words

http://pd.miami.com/sp?aff=101&keywords=Evelyn+Greer&pubDate=&submit=search
So, I tried it again but the original Sept. 6th article that the Herald made their mistake in, NEVER appeared on the page.
Don't think that the Herald's own reporters don't know how bad the website is -they hear it from people everywhere they go.

Draw your own conclusions!

Benazir Bhutto is STILL a woman and other Herald corrections

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what sort of editing goes on at the Mistake on the Bay, whose unattractive building continues to ruin the view for everyone.

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/231929.html September 10, 2007
The byline was missing from a column that appeared on the front of Sunday's Issues & Ideas section. The column, titled 'Thinking our way to victory,' was written by George Will.

Il prend comme siennes les idées des autres!

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/229964.html September 8, 2007
A photo caption on Page 1B of Friday's Broward & State edition misspelled the name of Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti.
A story that appeared inside the Metro and Broward sections on Friday incorrectly said convicted felons could apply to have their records sealed. Under Florida law, they are ineligible to have their files sealed.

In Todd Wright's story on Sept. 7th, Mara's name is in the first sentence. How do you not notice that in doing the liner note under her photo? "Hollywood Mayor Mara Giulianti is the marquee witness in the public corruption trial of suspended Commissioner Keith Wasserstrom, but it was a retired city purchasing agent's testimony Thursday that poked the biggest hole so far in the state's case."

In the actual story on the turnout, the Herald's Mary Ellen Klas and Susannah A. Nesmith blamed a local radio station for having broadcast erroneous information about convicted felons, but made no mention of the Herald's own role in the turnout debacle: "Organizers were a little overwhelmed by the turnout in Little Haiti, which was boosted by an inaccurate announcement on a local radio station -- that anyone with a felony arrest could get the file sealed."

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/224725.html September 4, 2007

A story that appeared on Page 1B in the Metro & State edition on Friday mischaracterized the reasons behind an Aug. 28 march organized by black leaders in Miami-Dade County. The march was aimed at commemorating the 1963 March on Washington and on calling attention to an array of local issues, such as affordable housing to labor concerns.

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/220944.html August 31, 2007
A headline in the World Briefs column misstated the gender of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who is a woman. The headline ran in some Thursday editions on Page 16A.

http://www.miamiherald.com/461/story/212305.html August 23, 2007
A Business Brief on Page 1C Tuesday misstated Lennar's ticker symbol. It is LEN. And, Vice President Marshall Ames bought Lennar shares on the open market; he did not exercise options.

Good thing that Lennar is a Miami-based company so that someone in the Herald's Business section -one of THE worst in the country!- might actually spot the mistake. Oops!

Flight 93 National Memorial Sixth Anniversary Commemoration Events

Received the following information on Friday from the Flight 93 Memorial folks regarding this week's activities:

__________________________________

Flight 93 National Memorial Sixth Anniversary Commemoration Events

September 10, 2007

The formal commemorative service will take place on Monday evening, September 10, 2007, in Somerset, Pennsylvania at the Somerset Alliance Church, 708 Stoystown Road, beginning at 6:30 PM with prelude music. The memorial service will start at 7:00 PM.

The theme for this year is The Spirit of Community.

The Families of Flight 93 and the Flight 93 project partners wish to honor and pay tribute to the community for all that has been done for the heroes of Flight 93 and to help the families in their healing process. Speakers will include Mr. Henry Cook, Somerset Trust Bank, who was a member of the Stage 2 design competition jury and who has been very active in fundraising for the memorial. Also speaking will be Mr. Chris Sullivan, Capital Campaign Chairman, and Mr. Edwin Root, President of the Families of Flight 93.

Musical selections will be performed by the Somerset County Community Band and Laurel Highlands Chorale. Readings will be by Flight 93 family members. The commemoration service is open to the public; there is no reserved seating. Light refreshments will follow the service.

September 11, 2007

On September 11, the Temporary Memorial on Skyline Road near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, will be open from dawn to dusk. The morning service will begin at approximately 9:55 am with the traditional reading of the names of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 and the tolling of the “Bells of Remembrance.” The brief service will conclude with laying of wreaths. There will be no seating during this ceremony. Parking will be immediately adjacent to the Temporary Memorial; handicapped parking is available.

Any person or group planning their personal ceremonial tribute, and/or require 1st Amendment accommodation, must call the National Park Service office at (814) 443-4557 prior to September 7th.

__________________________________________________________________

Starting in late September, the project website http://www.flight93memorialproject.com/ will be merged into the permanent websites for the national memorial, the National Park Service website, http://www.nps.gov/flni or the website for the Flight 93 National Memorial Fund http://www.honorflight93.org/
The national memorial is slated to open in 2011, the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. Please go to the websites and see for yourself the beautiful design plans.

For more information please contact the NPS at:
109 West Main Street, Suite 104, Somerset, PA 15501

Park Planning Office (814) 443-4557, Fax (814) 443-2180

Since my last posting on their memorial activities, I've gotten DirectTV and now been able to see Paul Greengrass's wonderful film United 93 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475276/

three more times, making a total of either six or seven.

And every time I see it, I think back to my friends and I at work on Pennsylvania Avenue the morning of September 11th, ten blocks away from the U.S. Capitol, across from DOJ and the FBI. If not for the bravery and heroism of the Passengers & Crew, would I even be alive?
Or would I have been a witness to the plane's descent into the Capitol?

In case you've somehow missed it so far, the entry below is from one of my permanent anchors on the SouthBeachHoosier blog:

Thoughts on The Pentagon and 9/11

Let me relate a 9/11 anecdote that gives you some sort of insight into me, and informs my posts here. I lived for about 15 years in Washington, D.C., and while there, worked on behalf of some of the top law firms and business groups in town, doing all sorts of things on both Capitol Hill and along the K Street corridor. While doing so, I was fortunate to meet and befriend lots of very talented, committed and impressive people, including lots from the media, think tank and public policy sectors, as well as the diplomatic community.

On 9/11, I was working on a project for Crowell & Moring, in an office in their DC office right across the street from the FBI & DOJ, and next to the Naval Memorial. After the initial reports of the attack in New York and on The Pentagon, from our vantage point on the large patio overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, we could see past the Old Post Office across the street, and could clearly see the smoke rising up from The Pentagon to our southwest.

Being equidistant to both The White House and the U.S. Capitol -and thus, in a position to have seen any attack on either- once we received word to evacuate the building because a plane within range of DC still hadn't been accounted for -what we would all later all know as United Flight 93-I decided to forego playing the role of a sardine in a can on the Metro, and decided to walk the 7-plus miles to my place in north Arlington, mostly via K Street, M Street in Georgetown, and finally Lee Highway in Arlington.

When I got a few blocks away from the office and was near Metro Center, whom do you suppose I walked right into, but the one man, whom, IF things had fallen differently, might've played a much larger role that tragic day?

(As I walked and walked, it was while listening on my Sony AM/FM/TV portable radio, via ABC News' Good Morning America -the same program that had informed my entire floor for 90 minutes before when we gathered en masse around my radio in our floor lobby area- that I first learned that some of the planes involved in the attacks had departed out of Boston's Logan Airport.

That news made my heart sink, and made the walk home seem far longer than it normally would, since one of my former housemates in Arlington, Jennifer Dugan, a wonderfully sweet, thoughtful and immensely adorable University of Rhode Island grad, was, in fact, a flight attendant for US Airways, working out of Logan.)

That man I'm referring to was George Terwilliger, then of the DC office of McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe LLP, whom I knew from 1627 Eye Street, the location of the New York Times' DC bureau, who's now at WhiteCase, http://www.whitecase.com/gterwilliger/ Mr. Terwilliger was the man that much of the Washington press corps and Beltway Crowd thought was the likely first choice for President Bush to be FBI Director, and a person that many of my friends at 1627 had an enormous amount of respect and admiration for, even if they disagreed with him politically. When I saw him in passing on the sidewalk, with a concerned and pensive look on his face, like nearly everyone passing us on both sides and spilling out onto the road, all I could think to myself was, "Be careful what you wish for."

Hollywood Beach Town Hall Meeting Sept. 11th; CRA editorial

Received the email below on Friday.
Having gone to most of the public hearings and forums regarding the Johnson Street project, I will have a lot to say about this -before and at the meeting.

I'm not stepping on my own lines by telling you here that it will all be uniformily unflattering to the city and Mr. Benson in general and the Hollywood CRA in particular, including numerous examples of the city's failure to follow through on their past promises, even on something as simple as posting adequate public notice on the Johnson Street site prior to meetings.

Believe me, I went there to double-check for them and they were nowhere to be found.

When I'd physically go to the CRA office the afternoon of the meetings, nobody was around who could explain the failure to handle something so basic.
_________________
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/story/229983.html
Miami Herald
Editorial
September 8th, 2007
Big change for CRAs

The Florida Supreme Court this week put the reins on Community Redevelopment Agencies, known as CRAs, leaving their supporters reeling in surprise. There are 178 CRAs created by local governments in Florida to revitalize blighted areas. The agencies collect a portion of the property taxes within defined tax-increment districts to spend on improvements there.
The CRAs' record is decidely mixed. Some -- in Miami Beach, for example -- have wrought wonders. Others, like Miami's CRA, which has been hampered by conflicting agendas, have yet to live up to their promise. With the court's ruling, the CRAs, which are governed by boards made up of elected officials, will now have to be more accountable. This is a good thing, even if it makes CRAs' jobs more challenging.
The court reversed an earlier ruling in deciding that the state Constitution requires CRAs to seek voter approval to use tax-increment dollars to finance bonds for capital-improvement projects. This is a huge change. Until this decision, city or county commissioners or school-board members governing a CRA could simply take a vote to issue bonds using district money. Now elected officials will have to take such a proposal to a vote, like any other bond issue. The ruling left unclear if the vote would be limited to the taxing district or held citywide.
The ruling won't stop dubious decisions, such as the Hollywood City Commission's buying land with CRA money and turning it over to developers for free. But it definitely will allow more public say on big-ticket items such as the Miami City Commission's plan to use CRA money to back $50 million in bonds to pay for the city's share of a port tunnel. Neither the port nor the entrance to the tunnel -- Watson Island -- are in the taxing district.
Now, the Miami CRA and other redevelopment agencies will have to justify major spending decisions to voters. Responsible CRA leaders need not fear. South Florida voters in the past have ably separated the good from the bad deals in bond-issue referendums.
________________________________________________________
NotifyMe@hollywoodfl.org

City of Hollywood, Florida
Office of the City Manager

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 7, 2007
Contact: Raelin Storey
Media Relations Director
Phone: (954) 921-3098 Fax: (954) 921-3314
E-mail: rstorey@hollywoodfl.org

TOWN HALL MEETING ON HOLLYWOOD BEACH
SET FOR 7:00 PM, SEPTEMBER 11, 2007

HOLLYWOOD, FL - District 1 Hollywood City Commissioner Cathy Anderson will be holding a town hall meeting at the Hollywood Beach Culture and Community Center at 1301 South Ocean Drive to provide residents an opportunity to hear about the proposed Master Plan for Hollywood Beach from renowned urban designer Bernard Zyscovich. This proposed plan is a comprehensive look at zoning, land use and redevelopment on Hollywood's world famous beach.

Residents will also have access to valuable information about emergency preparedness from the Florida Department of Emergency Management, expert assistance with questions relating to property tax assessments, and guidance from the Broward County Historical Commission for owners of historical properties.

"I wanted to create a forum for the residents of Hollywood to get vital information on a number of issues I know they have questions about," says Commissioner Anderson. "I hope it will be a beneficial and enjoyable evening."

City Manager Cameron Benson will provide an overview of current issues facing the City. Gil Martinez, Executive Director of the Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency-Beach District will update residents on a number of construction projects along the beach. Members of the City's senior staff will also be available to talk with residents.

For additional information contact the CRA-Beach District at (954) 924-2980 or the Office of the Mayor and Commissioners at (954) 921-3321.

When Everybody Wants to be a Political Wiseguy

Per my recent comments about Bill Richardson casting his lot with folks who claim that ACT was a positive step in the right direction...
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New York Times
September 1, 2007
Editorial
The Slow Pursuit of Political Wiseguys

Too little and too late, federal regulators are getting around to one of the worst abuses in the last presidential election — the channeling of unregulated tens of millions in “soft money” contributions to shadow party operations created to evade federal campaign controls.
These clearly partisan groups should have been tightly regulated as political action committees, but they improperly claimed exemption under the tax code as simpler advocacy organizations. Three years after election complaints were filed, regulators have cited one of the bigger abusers — America Coming Together, a Democratic get-out-the-vote drive that spent nearly $100 million in skirting the campaign law.
A settlement includes a fine of $775,000, which federal regulators say should be a warning against future abusers. But party wheel horses could just as easily take that as a fair price for further shady electioneering next year, unless the federal elections commission sets clear and early regulations against it. Party sugar daddies stand ready with their checkbooks for fresh variations on this devious theme. The billionaire George Soros helped bankroll America Coming Together under the leadership of Harold Ickes, the Democrats’ field marshal. The commission has reprimanded Republican shell operations, too, notably the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads scurrilously financed under the radar.
Representatives of America Coming Together, defunct after the ’04 election, ludicrously proclaimed vindication in the commission’s citation and punishment. This signaled that fresh groups undoubtedly are eager to game the next elections.
The commission has too often served as the lair for safe appointees from both parties dedicated to protecting machine values. It’s time for the commission to confront the political wiseguys’ next round of machinations with firmer regulations and bigger fines.

Despite what Miami Herald says, U.S. Constitution STILL applies to South Florida

Pablo Bachelet is one of the the Miami Herald/McClatchy's resident Latin America experts. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/167
Personally, I prefer the work of the Herald's Tyler Bridges. Maybe it's because of his conversational style, but his stories stay with me a lot longer than Bachelet's.

Like so many reporters and columnists at the Herald, he blows both hot and cold, often within the same story, often on consecutive days.
Sometimes, like the proverbial blind pig who finds an acorn, he stumbles upon something that comes perilously close to insight, or at least an original thought on Latin America, a specific country there or some aspect of U.S. foreign policy towards the area.

One that I haven't already read in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs or don't recall anyone having already uttered at some foreign policy event at SAIS, Brookings, AEI or over at the Wilson Center for International Scholars, whose Latin America program is great,
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1425

[This would've been before they moved into the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues, NW, http://www.itcdc.com/ and were still in the Smithsonian Institution's iconic castle on the Mall. http://www.si.edu/visit/infocenter/sicastle.htm

(Trivia note: the huge parking lot shown in the film version of Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein's All the President's Men, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/ which featured some unintentionally humorous shots of Robert Redford as Bob Woodward freaking out about possibly being followed, is where the Reagan Bldg. is currently located.)

The Latin America dept. at Wilson rarely had something going on there which didn't attract a large crowd of well-informed and very vocal partisans with a dog in that particular fight, even decades-old fights that had been chewed on and dissected a million times before.
For instance, like Reagan's support for the Contras, Pinochet's middle-class opportunistic allies who looked the other way, why Argentina is always self-destructing, was Brazil too big and unmanageable for its own good, etc.
In that regard, of course, it reminded me a lot of Miami, where no old slight or fight is ever forgotten, merely placed in storage somewhere for a bit like Christmas ornaments, ready to come out again when the time is appropriate.

Unfortunately, for the most part, not unlike the Wilson Center's always topical and prescient Russian studies program -The Kennan Institute, run by Blair Ruble, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.profile&person_id=4997&topic_id=1424 -which had guests predicting something like perestroika publicly before the C.I.A., it was often just elites -and authors at that!- speaking to other elites in the room.
That's why my usual pattern at these events after the panel was over was to always let the requisite back-patting Q&A go on for a bit before I'd rise, walk over to the mike and pepper the guests with questions they didn't usually get at such gatherings.
Like, but to cite the most obvious example, why they couldn't or wouldn't accept the fact that, however much they wished that it weren't so, Latin America was/is indeed held in low regard by so many Americans precisely because of demonstrable facts, and not simply of misperceptions, the card that they continually play, premised on the kind of silly arguments you rarely hear said with a straight face outside of South Florida to rationalize points lacking in logic or reason.

Sort of like the problem that the militant Islamic apologists at CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations pretend don't exist, by insisting that America is the problem, not the actions of individuals. Talk about bad salesmanship!
For proof of that , you only need to read Neil MacFarquar's story in today's New York Times titled, Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04muslims.html

(Somehow, despite the topic, MacFarquar conveniently forgets that one of the reasons that former Times reporter Judith Miller was considered radioactive was because she personally phoned a Chicago Muslim group to give them a warning, right before the FBI was going to serve a warrant on them to search for info that they were intentionally fooling well-meaning American Muslims, legitimately interested in zakat, by illegally funnelling millions to overseas terror support groups. Oh well!
In case you didn't know or have already forgotten, the U.S. attorney in Chicago investigating that Chicago case was Patrick Fitzgerald, the very same federal prosecutor who went after Miller in the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby blackhole of a 'perjury trap,' which was un-necessary because Fitzgerald already knew that Colin Powell's assistant Richard L. Armitage was the source of Bob Novak's column.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0611FB3C550C768CDDAE0894DF404482

For background on the the Dallas trial referred to in his article, see
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9F00E3D6133DF93AA25751C1A9649C8B63

The Washington Post's excellent index of their stories and essays on the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby matter is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/09/29/LI2005092901976.html

Reminder: Lest you forget, I agreed with President Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/06/pardon-libby-or-at-least-read-his-book.html )

Still, regardless of the fireworks inside the room, after everyone retired to the lobby area, they always had a nice food and drink spread, which made the après-ski portion of the program always entertaining and amusing!
Nothing like watching well-known experts arguing 'till they're blue in the face while simultaneously holding their wine glasses in the air, just like some made-for-TV movie about the Georgetown diplomatic crowd at play. Sorry about the tangent!)

Unfortunately for Bachelet, this past Sunday was not one for the highlight reels, for either him personally or the folks behind the Herald's sad-sack Issues and Ideas section, long a national laughingstock of an OpEd section, especially when they were running nothing but puff pieces extolling the Carnival Center before it was finished, which, to my way of thinking, Chinese wall and all that, more appropriately belonged in the Tropical Life section, if not in a paid advertising section. (Didn't anyone learn from the LA Times' Staples scandal?)
But that's how the boosterish Herald is when they get behind something -ethical lines are crossed and ignored.

The section was more muddled thinking than I was expecting for a Labor Day weekend and certainly more than I personally can dissect here. Suffice to say that I'll concentrate here on the most glaring self-evident factual mistake.

As most of you know by now, I've been a vocal supporter of Bill Richardson since first meeting him and talking to him fairly frequently in the early 90's, when he was still a New Mexico congressman. He's really a great guy and has a perceptive mind that's well beyond most politicians and reporters in Washington.
As it happens, I was the person who first told him -at the Georgetown Park Mall no less- just who then-House candidate and now current U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was, and what his whole background and "Independent" modus operandi was.
Sadly, I had to throw in the towel completely on Bill Richardson during the recent Iowa debate televised on ABC News, when, on top of all the issues he's consistently gotten on the wrong side of frommy point of view, he just couldn't have seemed less compelling or able to seize the moment by displaying the solid qualities I know he has.
Plus, well, I've support the war in Iraq since the beginning, so Richardson and company's silly emails to me over the past few months just got old and irritating.

He could've really shown some strength and played the Sister Souljah card by taking advantage of his unique background and said that the horrific slayings in Newark show that, whatever else you think, immigration advocates who are so zealous in their desires -and personal hatred of President Bush- that they willfully ignore the consequences of the ripple effect of having thousands and thousands of illegal alien criminals in our society, preying upon honest legal immigrants as much if not more than native-born Americans, do themselves no favor.
He could've done that, but he didn't.

Once he threw in his lot with the Daily Kos folks and the George Soros folks who were part of ACT -America Coming Together- which just paid $775K in fines to the Federal Election Commission, http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070829act.shtml -a story that couldn't possibly have gotten less media coverage!- I knew it was time to throw him and his silly campaign overboard toute-de-suite!
(Also see the Times' honest editorial of September 1st, The Slow Pursuit of Political Wiseguys
where they blast ACT.
"Federal regulators are getting around late to one of the worst abuses in the last presidential election — the channeling of unregulated “soft money.”)

I'm hopeful that he'll learn something from the experience and perhaps in the future, wiser from the experience, not repeat the same mistakes and realize that you only have one chance to make a good first impression on the American people.
Arguing for defeat in Iraq and leaving a vacuum is not the way to do it.

Please note for the record that even in South Florida, the U.S. Constitution still attaches:

Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

As I've always known and Bill Richardson's own website makes crystal clear for even the dumbest of reporters or editors, http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/about_bill?id=0004
Bill "was born on November 15, 1947 in Pasadena, California to William Richardson and Maria Luisa Lopez-Collada. William Richardson was a banker who had been working in Mexico City for decades and he settled his family there shortly after Bill's birth."

Red highlighting below the result of an Indiana University education.
Poor Pablo, he and the Herald editors just don't know the law of the land.
Very McClatchy!
__________________________________________________
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/221823.html
Miami Herald
Sept. 2, 2007
Debate on Latin America shallow
BY PABLO BACHELET

It has become an article of faith for U.S. presidential hopefuls: If elected, they would give Latin America the attention it deserves.
Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney pledged to ''rebuild relationships of trust,'' while John McCain said Latin American nations are ``natural partners of the United States.''
Democrat Bill Richardson wants to resurrect the Kennedy-era Alliance for Progress, while rival Barack Obama promised a listening tour, starting with a visit to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has been critical of President Bush.
Such words are a welcome development for a region that largely sees Bush as too distracted by the war in Iraq to reverse the drop in U.S.-Latin American relations.
''Latin Americans are looking with a certain degree of enthusiasm for a new administration in Washington,'' said Peter Hakim, who heads the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. ``They're basically very unhappy with the Bush administration, and there is a degree of anticipation.''
But peel away the presidential hopefuls' lofty words, observers say, and there have been few substantive proposals on issues that matter the most to many Latin American governments: treatment of migrants and access to the U.S. market. Instead, there is plenty of fiery rhetoric condemning anti-U.S. leaders like Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro -- but few proposals that deviate substantially from what the Bush administration has done.
Hakim argued that Latin Americans should be ''cautious'' because presidential candidates are not pushing an agenda that suits them on trade and migration. Bush, he added, has been friendlier on issues such as comprehensive migration reform, free-trade pacts with Peru, Panama and Colombia, and cutting farm subsidies that anger Brazil.
With states with large Hispanic populations like Florida and California moving up their presidential primaries and foreign policy becoming a key debating point, Latin America is receiving more attention than usual at this point in the race.
McCain delivered a Latin America speech in West Palm Beach in June in which he pledged to re-create the defunct U.S. Information Agency to improve Washington's diplomacy outreach.
Romney has tried to show his interest in Latin America by putting out statements for the national days of Peru, Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela, speaking in favor of free trade and condemning Chávez and Castro. He has also announced high-profile campaign advisors, including Al Cardenas, a Miami Cuban American and former head of Florida's Republican Party, and Mexican American Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.
On the Democratic side, former White House Chief of Staff Thomas ''Mack'' McLarty describes Sen. Hillary Clinton as an ''engaged internationalist'' who, as first lady, visited 17 Latin American countries.
Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, speaks fluent Spanish and has met with 49 heads of state from Latin America and the Caribbean since 1987, according to his campaign.
Richardson, who was born in Mexico and speaks nearly fluent Spanish, is a special Organization of American States envoy to Latin America on migration issues. Besides reviving Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, he says he would move key government agencies to Miami because of its nearness to Latin America.
But while the candidates may know and talk about the issues that matter most to most Latin Americans, they also face pressures of domestic political considerations.
''It's very predictable that the three issues where Latin America and presidential politics intersect are going to be immigration, trade and Cuba-Venezuela,'' said Nelson Cunningham, a former special advisor on Latin America for the Clinton administration.
Immigration can be a toxic issue for Republicans because many conservative voters are angry over a perceived flood of undocumented migration from Latin America. ''Any time a Republican candidate talks about Latin America, they have to link to two things,'' Cunningham said. ``One is being tough on immigrants, and No. 2, being tough on Castro. That's become their one-two punch.''
Democrats, for their part, are reluctant to tackle free trade because their organized-labor partners oppose it. John Edwards has blasted pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement for having ''devastated towns and communities across this country.'' Clinton and Obama say they favor free trade but opposed an agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic in 2005, claiming it lacked sufficient provisions to protect workers and the environment.
Castro and Chávez are condemned by all candidates, but there are some cracks on how to deal with them.
Obama and Richardson favor allowing more family travel to Cuba. Obama caused a stir when he suggested that under ''certain conditions,'' he would meet with U.S. foes like Chávez or the Castro government. ''Sometimes it is more important to talk to your enemies than to your friends,'' he told Miami Herald columnist Andrés Oppenheimer. Then he wrote an opinion piece in The Miami Herald saying he would allow more family travel and remittances to Cuba and held a well-attended rally in Miami's Little Havana on Aug. 25.
Hillary Clinton criticized Obama's positions as ''naive,'' but Obama is hardly alone in that stance. Clinton herself has, in 2003 and 2005, voted in favor of bills that would have relaxed restrictions on travel to Cuba.
Dodd, in a statement to The Miami Herald, said, ``We need to open up channels of communication with all sectors of Cuban society, including with Cuban government authorities.''
Richardson said he is ''a believer in negotiations'' without preconditions. He wants to lift the U.S. embargo if Cuba frees political prisoners and agrees to ''negotiated democratic reforms'' -- without going into specifics.
But, tellingly, neither Clinton nor Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani has pronounced speeches on Latin America, although their campaigns say they plan to do so soon. Observers say this is in part because the Hispanic community isn't pushing the issue, and Latin America-related questions rarely come up in debates.
Polls show that Hispanics who vote in the United States resent discrimination against Latinos but rank bread-and- butter issues like healthcare as top concerns.