Obama’s Brazil Trip May be Political Mistake

President Barack Obama’s foreign trips so far haven’t done him any good politically, many in Washington say. And that could be the case again with his five-day visit to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador that begins Friday night, Politico reports.

It may not look so good for the president to leave the country while a nuclear crisis rages in Japan, the United States and its allies consider an attack on Libya and the two parties battle it out over the budget.

“The White House doesn’t have a lot of luck with these foreign trips,” Riordan Roett, director of the Latin America program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told Politico.

As for past journeys, when Obama ventured to Europe and Africa in July 2009, his allies say the White House lost influence on the healthcare debate.