After Trump and Bolsonaro, Can Biden and Lula Have Their Own Bromance?
After Trump and Bolsonaro, Can Biden and Lula Have Their Own Bromance?
"We are going back to normal and normal is two big continent-sized democracies who have shared interests but also a history of not seeing eye-to-eye," said AS/COA's Brian Winter to The Washington Post.
President Biden hosts his Brazilian counterpart at the White House on Friday. The visit of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Washington marks a meeting of the leaders of the Western hemisphere’s two biggest economies and democracies. And it’s being framed as a chance for a fresh start after the chaos left behind by both of these presidents’ predecessors — tenures marked by polarization, political tumult and the ideological convergence of hard-right nationalists in both countries.
Lula arrived in Washington a month after supporters of defeated former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed key institutions of the federal state in the capital Brasília in a failed bid to oust the leftist leader and his new administration. In the weeks since, Brazilian officials have stressed that Biden’s swift and strong backing of both Lula and Brazil’s democratic institutions, as well as the solidarity of many other countries elsewhere, proved crucial during a fraught moment for Brazil’s still-young democracy. […]
“The Trump and Bolsonaro bromance brought the two countries closer together during those years, but they are both gone now and replaced by these two leaders who also have a lot in common,” Brian Winter, veteran Brazil analyst and editor of Americas Quarterly, told me. “These are two aging statesmen who managed to defeat a threat from the authoritarian right at the ballot box and survive insurrections at their capitals.”…
“If Lula pushes too hard on [Ukraine at the White House], it’s not going to go well,” Winter said. He added that the meeting with Biden may ultimately mark a return to an older hemispheric status quo: “We are going back to normal and normal is two big continent-sized democracies who have shared interests but also a history of not seeing eye-to-eye.”
