Fox apparently never doubted that he would win. When he received the first exit-poll data suggesting his victory–he was watching the Euro Cup soccer final with his children at the time–he was remarkably relaxed. His calm confidence reflected his belief that the Mexican people were fed up with the PRI. The exit polls confirmed it: more than two thirds of Fox’s supporters voted for him because they identified him as an agent of change; a similar percentage of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas’s followers cast their ballot for his PRD for similar reasons. Even a significant chunk of Francisco Labastida’s political base wanted change–Labastida campaigned as the “New PRI” candidate. While Mexicans were not totally unhappy with the present state of affairs–President Ernesto Zedillo’s popularity is quite high–they obviously wanted change. As a result, Fox will be able to count on a broad consensus to move beyond the status quo. He has shifted so smoothly–so far–from campaign mode to statesmanship that his popularity has soared; he gives his aides the impression of wanting to start right away on a relentless drive to change Mexico.
And that’s his main challenge. Fox has tried, on some occasions more successfully than on others, to give change meaning and precision in economic and social policy, in re-establishing law and order and security for people and property, in reforming institutions and combating inequality and poverty and in eradicating corruption. He will now have to strike the perfect, almost impossible balance between the specific, policy-based definition of change that people want and expect, and the self-evident limits on change that Mexico’s domestic and external situation obviously impose. Many factors limit the scope of hoped-for change: globalization, economic constraints, a powerful opposition, the divisions within his own party and the strains of an excessively long transition period. Fox has already shown his uncommon negotiating skills in building the left-right coalition that took him to power, but that is almost child’s play compared with the tasks ahead.
What can Fox do? He does not have majority support in Congress, so he must choose among three alternatives. He can ally himself with the dinosaur-ridden PRI to obtain legislative approval for his ambitious economic, social and institutional program. He can try to forge ad hoc compromises on each reform. Or he can seek to establish a strategic understanding with Cardenas’s demoralized and increasingly fundamentalist PRD. Fox has repeatedly told his team, during the campaign and after the election, that in view of the conservative anchors represented by his party and his business constituency, he clearly prefers the third option. Nothing would taint his enormous accomplishment more than resorting to politics as usual and cutting deals with mas de lo mismo (“the same old PRI”). Moreover, as he showed during the many seminars he attended with a group of Latin American center and center-left political leaders (organized by Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger and this author), Fox believes in a progressive social agenda, something almost impossible to achieve in Mexico without the left. But it takes two to toast tequila, and despite repeated attempts as recently as last week, the PRD seems reluctant to risk losing its ideological purity.
For the first time in its history, Mexico has had power contended for, conquered and transferred at the ballot box. This is no minor feat for a country where coups, revolutions, foreign interventions and interminable personal or party dictatorships were the norm since the early 19th century. In theory, the country has modernized itself sufficiently to make this transition successfully. On paper and in practice, Fox is as well equipped as any previous Mexican leader to succeed in this endeavor. Mexico finally has everything going for it–and it’s about time.
