How Venezuela and Argentina turned into campaign props for Bolsonaro

The weeks between the first and second rounds of an election are usually the moment for simple campaign messaging. Attacking the perceived weakest points of your rival is perhaps the most obvious route for party communications teams.

For Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign in Brazil, taking aim at left-wing governments in Latin America has long been one of his go-to lines of attack, part of a broader bid to associate his rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with more radical governments. And after the first round results were in, Brazil’s president wasted no time in doubling down on that approach.

“I understand that many Brazilian people have felt the hike in basic food prices. I understand there is a will to change things, but sometimes things can change for the worse. Look at Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. All those countries made a turn to the left and ended up doing worse,” Mr. Bolsonaro said on the night after the election.

Of course, Lula’s track record shows that he is a very different leader to Hugo Chávez or Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Prior to the 2002 election, he focused on assuaging market fears about his economic agenda, promising to keep much of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s prudent macroeconomic legacy, as well as his generally liberal approach to foreign trade.

Lula opted for negotiation over all-out war with the country’s elites and never pushed Brazil’s constitutional limits looking for a second re-election (a degree of restraint leaders such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales didn’t have). Nor did he ever ban opposition leaders from political participation, something that can’t be said of Venezuela’s leaders.

But the unprecedented magnitude of the Venezuelan crisis made it into a topic that is hard to...