And there is a bipartisan movement in Congress to move further and faster on Cuba than Obama is prepared to go at the present time.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat, and Sen. Mike Enzi, Wyoming Republican, introduced legislation last month to end the travel ban entirely, and Democratic New York Rep. Charles Rangel, the Ways and Means Committee chairman, along with 40 co-sponsors, is considering a bill to end the trade embargo.

No previous president since the 1960s has dared to challenge the bitter opposition within the Cuban-American community for fear of losing Florida's pivotal electoral votes. But Obama senses an emerging change of heart among Cuban-Americans toward opening up economic ties in Cuba. Starting with the power of person-to-person diplomacy.

"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban-Americans," he said in a campaign speech last May in Miami. "It's time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It's time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime." That emotional appeal won over lots of Cuban-Americans in last year's election.

"The U.S. relationship with Cuba is about to begin a long-overdue thaw," Latin American policy analyst Adrean Rothkopf recently wrote in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Web site. "With Fidel Castro on the sidelines and his elderly brother likely assuming the leadership for only a brief period, the Obama administration and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are beginning to show signs that they are willing, gradually, to embrace changes in U.S. policy.

"And with some luck, that might one day lead to undoing a 50-year-old policy that will almost certainly be remembered as one of the least effective in American history," she said.

Obama has taken a good first step, especially in allowing U.S. satellite and cellular communication companies -- the technology of freedom -- to offer services in Cuba.

But he may be underestimating how ready the Cuban people are for even broader change. Let's open the gates wider to U.S. tourism and everything else America's free market has to offer the Cuban people.

The failed Castro regime is dying. It's time to tear down the embargo wall and proclaim that we are open for business if they are ready to open their markets, liberalize their government, and free their citizens. My guess is that the Cuban people are ready to deal.