Fresh from his debate promise to meet with Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions, Senator Obama is now cozying up even closer to the Cuban dictator. In an opinion piece this week in the Miami Herald, the Democratic presidential candidate called for lifting restrictions on how often relatives can visit Cuba and easing the regulations on gifts and money sent back to the island.

The op-ed carries a heavy political undertone, as Mr. Obama is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser on Saturday for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. That local Democratic Party recently came out in favor of policy changes that resemble what Obama is proposing. Mr. Obama’s speech will also take place at the Miami-Dade Auditorium, the same location where Ronald Reagan once took a hard line against Castro, much to the delight of the Cuban-American community.

Mr. Obama’s debate remarks might have been an accidental blunder, but it’s harder to pass off an op-piece under the candidate’s byline as some sort of gaffe. On a trip to South Africa last year, Obama said that the struggle against apartheid there was an inspiration for his own political career. As the Cuban Liberty Council said in a statement this week, it’s too bad Mr. Obama doesn’t see the parallel between the struggle for democracy in Cuba and the one in South Africa, where economic sanctions helped bring about historic change of the sort that is dreamed of by Cubans from Miami to Havana.