If you doubt neoconservatism is dead, take note of how little attention not only President Donald Trump but even the American press is giving Edmundo González. González won Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election. Now exiled to Spain, he’s ready for his close-up. But if the bookers at CNN and Fox News and MS NOW have been calling, I can find no video evidence. The poor guy is devolving, right before our eyes, into a trivia question.

It’s enough to prompt nostalgia for—God help me—President George W. Bush’s “commitment to the global expansion of democracy,” a central pillar of what became known as the Bush Doctrine. Not that I ever fancied these principles as Dubya or the neocon hawks whispering in his ear applied them, but at least they demonstrated a proper regard for democratic governance.

To jog your memory: The anti-Chavismo Plataforma Unitaria Democrática party, or PUD, chose González after President Nicolás Maduro barred the Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado from running for president. There’s no doubt that González won the election—The Washington Post calculated that he got twice as many votes as Maduro—but Maduro, in a maneuver one worries Trump may someday emulate, claimed victory and refused to leave office. The United States, the European Parliament, and various other countries recognized González as the rightful winner. Since the invasion, Machado and French President Emmanuel Macron urged that González be installed as president.

González himself posted a video online Sunday saying, “As the president of Venezuela, I call on the security establishment to enforce the mandate that the........

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