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 Editorials | August 2005 
What If López Obrador Loses His Lead?
 Kelly Arthur Garrett - The Herald Mexico
| | Come December, if López Obrador still holds the opinion poll lead he's enjoyed for two years, he'll be very hard to beat. If that lead evaporates, however, he's in trouble. |
The marathon for the presidency started some years ago when President Vicente Fox first talked wistfully about a better life as a gentleman rancher. Finally, after endless months of a restless sameness interrupted only by a ham-fisted effort to disqualify the poll-leading candidate, we've hit a transition. Things are starting to get interesting.
The main reason for the new atmosphere is the advent of the three major parties' candidate-selection process. It began in earnest on Thursday when an Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) faction chose the lone challenger to party leader Roberto Madrazo, ensuring a lively, if lopsided, contest. The pretender is Arturo Montiel, an unspectacular governor of the State of Mexico who invested heavily in self-promotion and a neck-up physical makeover to get the nod.
In party circles, the carefully arranged battle is being billed as proof of the democratization of the former ruling party, and a healthy exercise in substantive debate. Outside, wags are calling it a special effects extravaganza a la T. rex vs. stegasaurus. Either way, some species of dinosaur wins.
At the same time, the National Action Party's (PAN) internal contest might be more competitive than previously billed. Santiago Creel spent more than a decade earning his reputation as a thoughtful and honest fighter for democratic openings, as well as a reasonably competent administrator. In the weeks since he gave up his cabinet post to run for president, it's all collapsing. How well he can recover from the fallout over his generous distribution of gambling permits to potentially helpful business interests is one of many balls in the air to watch.
Make-Or-Break Period
Curiously, though, the one candidate assured of his party's nomination may have the most at stake in the upcoming months. A number of analysts believe that the months leading up to the official campaign kickoff in January are a make-or-break period for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who'll get the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) nomination in the early fall.
Agustín Basave, a former envoy to Ireland and an especially articulate political observer close to López Obrador's campaign, summed it up crisply. Come December, if López Obrador (AMLO by acronym) still holds the opinion poll lead he's enjoyed for two years, he'll be very hard to beat. If that lead evaporates, however, he's in trouble.
Keeping that lead is not assured. AMLO has entered new territory that contrasts starkly with what we've all been used to since 2000. As July ended, so did his reign as the Federal District's head of government not with a bang but a shuffling of papers.
The volume threatens to stay turned down. No more heavily covered pre-dawn press conferences. No more public works inaugurations. And no more free ammunition from his enemies in the form of martyrizing impeachment proceedings.
In their place come the more mundane duties of flesh-pressing and proposal-promoting on the road. AMLO has been more successful as an office-holder (Mexico City mayor and, earlier, PRD president) than a candidate. He lost twice in gubernatorial races in his home state of Tabasco, and barely beat Creel for the Mexico City post in 2000. His popularity took off with his performance in office. How he fares outside the metropolitan hubbub he created remains to be seen.
Toting up the scorecard of López Obrador's truncated term as Mexico City mayor was last week's favorite parlor game. Reading the results, it's clear that any evaluation of his record amounts to a political Rorschach test. For example, a second deck on the periférico, the city's main freeway, can be an example of bold action to deal with real problems, or shameless political grandstanding at the public's expense. The discrepancy isn't a case of conflicting views on transportation solutions, but on AMLO himself.
Stepping Stone Success
There's a more realistic (and neutral) way of grading his four and a half years of running the huge capital. As progress toward a cure for the megalopolis's life-threatening condition, AMLO's incumbency was clearly insufficient, even neglectful. As initial non-invasive therapy after decades of patient decline, it was welcome. As a stepping stone for a presidential run, it was a staggering success.
That success is mainly owing to the spirit of involvement he awakened in the populace, but also to his choice of projects. Water and sewage probably deserved higher priority, but you can't point to underground pipes like you can to a spruced-up historic center. AMLO improved the city a little, but he improved his standing with the electorate much more.
The tangible political result of his mayoral performance is priceless a lead in the presidential polls ranging from around 7 points over Madrazo on up into the double figures. That lead determines the dynamics of the 2006 campaign. If it's gone by January, the PRI, can beat him with the traditional strategy of out-organizing the notoriously disorganized PRD. Also, a low turnout resulting from the AMLO magic wearing off will surely favor the PRI, with its voto duro of hardcore loyalists.
But if López Obrador is still the frontrunner at kick-off time, it will be hard to find effective weapons to bring him down, assuming that the weapon selection is limited to the legitimate. His lead disarms the usual choices.
For example, the argument that he's a threat to the market system has fallen out of favor. For one thing, most people now realize that it's simply not true. (Even subcomandante Marcos has said that López Obrador is a market man, though he didn't mean it as a compliment.)
More important, though, the accusation of populism is a strategic non-starter. AMLO's appeal inside and outside Mexico City largely rests on his perceived commitment to an activist government dedicated to improving the lot of the poor to wit, his creation of a pension program for the capital's elderly. Criticizing him for directly aiding the poor from the halls of power may make sense to the neoliberal purist, who sincerely believes that "handouts" do more harm than good. But the inescapable fact is that much of his popularity is precisely owing to that very use of the halls of power to directly aid the poor.
Same for the "anti-reform" tag imposed because of his opposition to privatizing Pemex and the electric power industry. AMLO's lead implies that the public sees the PAN's (and some of the PRI's) insistence on privatization as what's really holding up reform. AMLO's advocacy of reform without privatization the third way, so to speak seems to reflect public opinion.
Given his lead, AMLO's opponents' will also have a hard time fomenting a fear of inexperience, incompetence and chaos that many associate with the PRD. Leaders who preside over chaos don't lead opinion polls for the presidency.
Also, incompetent leaders don't complete projects opposed by the other parties (and some within his own party), much of the press, and most of the private sector. Some of us aren't thrilled by the periférico's second deck, but to much of the public it's emblematic of the distinction between López Obrador's can-do determination and the sclerotic Fox administration, where a mere handful of machete-wielding locals stopped an airport project.
Moving Through Minefields
And finally, a frontrunning López Obrador might be largely immune to underhand attacks or accusations of scandal. No politician moves through minefields more deftly, and none operates better in combat mode. If we've learned nothing else over the last half decade, we know that Andrés Manuel López Obrador is strongest when he's under attack. If his opponents don't come up with a plan to go after him personally, he may make one up for them.
All of his strengths, however, might be neutralized during the campaign if he's not leading. The lead lets him control the debate. With it, he's in a position of defending his own agenda against criticism, at which he excels. Without it, he has the harder task of getting his ideas heard above the roar of the other two (or more) candidates.
So the interesting issue in the next several months may be not so much who the PRI or PAN nominates, but whether López Obrador's unusual popularity has legs. That could make all the difference in the kind of campaign we see next year.
kellyg@prodigy.net.mx |
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