ABSTRACT
Though their style of populism differs tremendously from other world leaders discussed in this book, specifically in that they have taken populism to the authoritarian extreme, Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chávez share projective identification in common, as I will demonstrate in the following pages. Further, though Chávez has been dead since March 2013, his ascent to power aided in no small part by his wizardry with words, serves, I believe as a cautionary tale for what could happen in other countries where populism has taken root. With the passage of time, we can see that Chávez was not merely a democratic leader interested in lifting his countrymen out of poverty; his interest in sustaining power moved him to become the type of supreme leader he claimed to have fought all his adult life to remove. Rather than follow in the noble footsteps of the Roman military leader Cincinnatus, who, after serving 15 days as a dictator, resigned his post and return to his plow, Chávez and Ortega threw the plow away and remained at the helm of their countries.
