Remembering the 2006 Mexican presidential elections

Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Cargado originalmente por natarén

Ever since Hillary Clinton put a stop to her campaign to win the Democratic nomination and Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee I have been forcing myself not to draw comparisons between the current presidential race in the United States and our experience in Mexico a couple of years ago.

I believe that for democracy to be functional, electoral outcomes should result from voters’ enforcement of accountability. If a party in government has done right by the people, they should reward it by voting for its re-election. If, on the contrary, a party in government has failed in fulfilling its mandate, elections are the mechanism to ensure its demise from power and allow for another party to deliver on the demands of the majority.

Yet modern campaigning can often stand in the way of democratic accountability. Case in point is the 2006 Mexican presidential election. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a popular Mayor of Mexico City, started his bid propelled by polls agreeing on his front runner status as candidate. His campaign slogan was irresistible. "Primero, los pobres" ("First, the poor") was a simple and poignant reminder of what the first opposition government after 70 years of one party rule had failed to do: address effectively Mexico’s extreme inequality and poverty.

Lopez Obrador has pointed to the uneven and unfair conditions that ensured his unexplainable loss of the presidency to Felipe Calderon, a lackluster conservative candidate who promised more of the same failed policies courtesy of the Vicente Fox administration. Until now he has refused to acknowledge the obvious mistakes his campaign made in connecting with the voters and successfully presenting its message.

Completely certain of his triumph Lopez Obrador chose not to attend the first of the presidential debates which resulted in his first setback in the polls. Constituencies were regularly thrown under the bus by the Lopez Obrador campaign, as their internal polling showed them these were people not needed to secure a win. The candidate's own stubbornness and the zeal of many of his supporters raised suspicion amongst those not comfortable with Obrador's inspired leadership being offered as the solution to the country's woes.

Lopez Obrador's public persona and his campaign's confidence on the power of his charisma above the power of his arguments paved the way for some nasty characterizations made by the conservative press and by Calderon's negative campaign which influenced voters’ perceptions. Lopez Obrador was presented as messianic and full of himself. He was deemed an out-of-touch populist supported only by leftist intellectuals and those who did not know any better. He did not become president in part because by the end of the campaigns, while most Mexicans still disapproved of Vicente Fox's mismanagement many had come to believe that the Lopez Obrador alternative was scarier.

The Obama campaign has been falling into some of the same traps and thus has found itself in the current situation evinced by the latest polls: he is tied with the Republicans after 8 years of Bush. According to Rasmussen McCain is already ahead in the electoral college contest with 200 votes against Obama's 193. Campaigns do matter. Negative propaganda works. Ignoring or offending independents and the undecided takes a toll on a candidate's chances to win an election. Yet Obama and his supporters seem bent on staying on the path already transited by another progressive politician just across the border. At the end all mistakes will be redeemed as a result of Obama’s transformational, transcendental and post-partisan halo. Right.

Slightly off topic and on a cheerful note...

Mexico Flag / Bandera de Mexico
Cargado originalmente por Esparta

At midnight Mexican Independence will be commemorated with the traditional "Grito" a reenactment of Catholic Priest Miguel Hidalgo's call in 1810 to an uprising that marked the start of the long struggle towards achieving independence from Spain. Tomorrow is Mexico's most revered national day to be celebrated with fiestas and parades... that is if Ike will kindly give us a break.

Turning the tables

Gordon Brown - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2008
Cargado originalmente por World Economic Forum
(Gordon Brown sporting Mr. Bean's haircut at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2008 Copyright World Economic Forum Photo by Remy Steinegger)

It appears that Mexican president Felipe Calderon is not alone amongst foreign leaders who declare their support for one of the U.S.presidential candidates. Just last week British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made headlines with his endorsement of Barack Obama. Praising the advance of progressive leadership around the world, Brown described Obama's campaign as the one "generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times". Brown made no mention in his article of what John McCain and the Republicans are contributing to the race. He has subsequently been criticized for this endorsement which has been qualified as a diplomatic blunder, with the British press arguing that leaders should maintain neutrality at all times regarding the elections in another country.

When I blogged about Calderon's wink at the McCain campaign Nonna rightly asked if this was a common practice, for a Mexican president to meddle into another country's election by announcing who his preferred winner was. My answer was no, it was not common. I also added that Calderon's words would have no impact on the Mexican- American vote. Yet I contended Calderon had good reasons to hope for a McCain win: his party has always maintained a good relation with the Republicans, the United States is Mexico's neighbour and largest economic partner and the Mexican government shares the Republican view on trade. Plus McCain's immigration stand is in tune with what the Mexican government advocates for those who cross the border in pursuit of the American dream.

The United States has traditionally and unapologetically made its preferences be known when other countries elect their leaders. With all the debate on what the "Bush doctrine" entails, one foreign policy doctrine that is well understood in the hemisphere is the Monroe doctrine with its Roosevelt Corollary. In Latin America, the United States has tried historically to exercise a veto power over the electoral choices people make when they are not in accordance with United States interests. Sometimes the United States has even recurred to military intervention or supported internal military coups in order to exercise this veto.

With the end of the Cold War, tipping electoral preferences abroad to favor American interests has required a more sophisticated approach. Declarations of United States ambassadors, American newspaper editorials, announcements made by State Department officials, all have the intention of letting Latin Americans know if a candidate would be welcomed by the United States as someone they can work with. A number of times, a United States endorsement has had the opposite intended effect as Latin American voters have chosen to reject American electoral advice (the elections and re-elections through referenda of both Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are examples of this trend).

The Bush administration's current unpopularity in and outside of the United States and the Iraqi disaster have paved the way for the tables turning. Call it the globalization of electoral meddling. The United States meddles with elections in other countries and other countries are now meddling with the elections in the United States. In a world where United States foreign policy decisions have such a big impact on the well being of all peoples it is plain common sense for foreign leaders to have a position on the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections. Is it undiplomatic to make their preferences publicly known? Yes. Relevant to voters’ preferences in the U.S.? No. Reason enough to back a complaint from within the United States? Certainly not, as the United States would thus be forced to acknowledge and decry its current and past interventionist actions in foreign elections, many of them much more condemnable than Calderon's support for John McCain or the enthusiastic praise that Brown had for Barack Obama.

A nonpartisan message from Gov. Palin and Senator Clinton on Saturday Night Live

What would Oriana Fallaci ask?

(Wendypants/Flickr)


In the United States, softball interviews with politicians are all too common. There are too many handlers and too many media outlets vying to get the “EXCLUSIVE.” One thing that struck me while studying in Britain during Tony Blair’s premiership was how often Blair would subject himself to drilling from reporters on the unpopular Iraq war. By contrast, George W. Bush took a decidedly Bartleby approach to the press.

The British prime minister faces aggressive questioning from MPs each week during Question Time and has his responses mocked accordingly. American voters don’t enjoy similar treats. Sure, we celebrate our freedom from the monarchy with massive consumption of grilled meat and beer on Fourth of July, but the president is treated more like the queen and less like the prime minister.

Christopher Hitchens wrote a fantastic Vanity Fair article back in 2006 about the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci and the demise of the art of the interview. The part that stayed with me was the beginning:

Here is an excerpt from an interview with what our media culture calls a "world leader":

Dan Rather: Mr. President, I hope you will take this question in the spirit in which it's asked. First of all, I regret that I do not speak Arabic. Do you speak any … any English at all?
Saddam Hussein (through translator): Have some coffee.
Rather: I have coffee.
Hussein (through translator): Americans like coffee.
Rather: That's true. And this American likes coffee.

And here is another interview with another "world leader":

Oriana Fallaci: When I try to talk about you, here in Tehran, people lock themselves in a fearful silence. They don't even dare pronounce your name, Majesty. Why is that?
The Shah: Out of an excess of respect, I suppose.
Fallaci: I'd like to ask you: if I were an Iranian instead of an Italian, and lived here and thought as I do and wrote as I do, I mean if I were to criticize you, would you throw me in jail?
The Shah: Probably.

The difference here is not just in the quality of the answers given by the two homicidal dictators. It is in the quality of the questions.

Charlie Gibson is no Oriana Fallaci and Sarah Palin is no Shah. I had very low expectations of the hyped up interview and, as a result, was not disappointed. Palin was clearly not answering some of Gibson’s questions and he was right to push her on some of them. He did not push all the way, but at least he did it. The question about her being able to handle her large family and the vice presidency was inappropriate. Interestingly, though, when he asked her if she thought it was a sexist question, she ran away from the word as if it were a contagious disease.

The Bush doctrine part of the interview has turned into an embarrassment for both sides. In the previous post, Barbara argues that Palin was right to ask Gibson for a clarification on which aspect of the Bush doctrine he meant. U.S. News and World Report Report’s Robert Schlesinger points out that Gibson should have used “preventive war” instead of “pre-emptive war.” My main beef with Gibson is that he used language that was unfamiliar to many people watching the program. Still, Palin is not just one of the viewers, and it was pretty clear to me that she did not have the foggiest idea about what he was talking about:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush—well, what do you—what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.

GIBSON: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

Asking tough, well-researched questions is one of the most important tasks that a reporter has. Honest answers to those tough questions set great politicians apart from mediocre ones.

Palin's impatient (and wrong) foreign policy teacher

Sarah Palin's anticipated interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson is now being publicised by some in the media as conclusive proof of the Governor of Alaska's lack of foreign policy experience. At one point of the interview Gibson asked Palin if she agreed with the "Bush doctrine". Her answer ("In what respect Charlie?") is being mocked as evidence of Palin's ignorance, an ignorance to be expected from a woman politician who, quite obviously for Gibson and many others, has no business in contending for the vice presidency of the United States.

According to the creator of the term, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Palin was right in demanding from Gibson a clarification of his question. Gibson's characterization of the "Bush doctrine" as purely a doctrine of preemptive war is wrong according to Krauthammer:

It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

Krauthammer centers his criticism in Gibson's perceived exasperation on defining the Bush doctrine for Palin and how this issue has been overexploited by the pundits to further dicredit McCain's VP pick:

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.

Tasteless cake

(Joe Germushka/Flickr)

Forget the joint and unnecessary appearance at ground zero by John McCain and Barack Obama. This cake, spotted at a Swedish bakery in Chicago, is one of the more bizarre examples of yesterday’s 9/11 commemorations. Thanks to my colleague Maxine Springer for telling me about the Cake Wrecks blog, home of numerous sugary monstrosities/reminders of why some of us just shouldn’t bake.