There is nothing more nauseating than the sight of a 'bipartisan' consensus in Washington. It is the political equivalent of two rival gangs agreeing to burn down the same orphanage. This week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee—a collection of individuals whose collective understanding of global nuances could fit inside a thimble—decided to take a break from their usual schedule of fund-raising and performative outrage to weigh in on the fate of Venezuela. Their conclusion? Maria Corina Machado should simply 'govern.' Because, as we all know, the most effective way to dismantle a calcified military autocracy is to have a handful of American congressmen send a sternly worded 'Go Get 'Em' from the comfort of a climate-controlled hearing room in D.C.

The spectacle is as predictable as it is pathetic. On one side, we have the Republican cohort, clinging to the Monroe Doctrine like a security blanket, desperate to find a new 'freedom fighter' to lionize so they can pretend they still have a foreign policy beyond 'build a wall.' On the other, the Democrats, eager to prove they aren't 'soft on socialism' while simultaneously ignoring the fact that their own domestic policies often resemble the very central-planning disasters they decry abroad. Together, they have joined forces to crown Machado as the latest savior-in-waiting, conveniently ignoring the reality that the man actually holding the guns in Caracas, Nicolás Maduro, doesn't particularly care about the opinion of a subcommittee in a city that can't even fix its own potholes.

Let us analyze the sheer absurdity of this 'call to govern.' The House Foreign Affairs members are operating under the quaint, almost touching delusion that their recognition carries some form of metaphysical weight. They speak of 'free and fair elections' in Venezuela with the same sincerity one might use to discuss the dental hygiene of a dragon. Machado, for her part, plays the role of the beleaguered democrat to perfection. She meets with these lawmakers, stresses the need for transparency, and gestures toward a future that is currently being suffocated by a regime that has successfully converted an oil-rich paradise into a case study for how to eat one's own tail.

The historical parallels are, of course, lost on these people. It wasn't that long ago that Washington was swooning over Juan Guaidó, the man the U.S. decided was President simply because they liked his suit and his penchant for not being Maduro. Guaidó was the 'legitimate' leader of Venezuela in every capital except Caracas. He was a ghost president, a phantom of the State Department’s imagination, eventually discarded like a last-season iPhone when it became clear he couldn't actually, you know, lead. Now, the same bipartisan geniuses are trying to run the same play with Machado, as if repeating the same failed experiment will somehow yield a result other than total, grinding failure.

The tragedy here isn't just the incompetence of the U.S. Congress—that’s a constant of the human condition—it’s the absolute disregard for the Venezuelan people, who are treated as little more than background noise for Washington’s moral posturing. To the lawmakers in D.C., Venezuela is not a country; it is a talking point. It is a way to signal virtue to voters in South Florida or to pretend that the 'rules-based international order' is anything more than a suggestion written in disappearing ink. They call for Machado to govern because it costs them nothing. It requires no sacrifice, no tactical brilliance, and no actual understanding of the power dynamics on the ground. It is the geopolitical equivalent of 'thoughts and prayers.'

Machado is trapped in a loop, a perennial candidate for a job that doesn't exist under a system that has long since abandoned the pretense of the ballot box. And while she seeks legitimacy from a group of people who are currently polling lower than athlete’s foot among their own constituents, the Maduro regime continues its slow-motion collapse into a narco-state. The bipartisan 'call' is a farce performed by actors who haven't read the script, directed by a blind man, for an audience that stopped watching years ago. It is a masterclass in otiose grandstanding. If Machado truly wants to govern, she’ll need more than a Zoom call with a bunch of people who think 'diplomacy' is something you do between cocktail hours. She’ll need a miracle, and unfortunately for her, Washington ran out of those decades ago, replaced entirely by a steady, toxic stream of bipartisan hot air.