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July 03, 2006
Mexico: One of the Most Electrifying Election Nights Ever
By Michael Barone(Note: The following are Michael Barone's impressions from the results of the Mexican election last night. Barone's detailed, blow-by-blow account of the returns can be found here.)
MEXICO CITY - This is one of the most astonishing and electrifying election nights I have ever witnessed. In a country which didn't have seriously contested elections from 1929 to 1994, we have just witnessed the culmination--or the beginning of the culmination--of one of the most closely and seriously contested elections in the history of major democratic nations in all time. Nobody I have encountered in covering this election had any serious confidence in predicting which candidate would win. And, it turns out, for good reason. This was--is--very, very close. You can infer from Lopez Obrador's and Calderon's statements between 11:00 and midnight that Lopez Obrador thought he probably lost and Calderon though he probably won. But probably. Given the close count, neither could be sure. Lopez Obrador was craftier, laying a predicate for claiming that the election was stolen. But his evidence was not overwhelming, and the seriousness of Ugalde, who is not a political appointee, cuts the other way. Lopez Obrador, characteristically, claimed the high moral ground as the advocate of the poor--but felt obliged to acknowledge that he recognizes the legitimate interests of all elements of society. He does not feel free to paint himself as another Hugo Chavez.
I cannot be sure what negotiating and behind-the-scenes discussions have been going on in Mexico City over the last couple of days, but you can be sure there were many. The polling numbers up to June 20--and the fact, easily ascertainable by insiders, that subsequent polling found little change--indicated that the election could easily be a dead heat. The question then is whether the loser would acknowledge the legitimacy of his defeat. Always it was likelier that Calderon would do so than Lopez Obrador. The broadcasts of Ugalde and Fox after 11:00 were clearly choreographed, presumably after extensive discussions and debates on election night, probably running up to the minute of their taping. There are many aspects of the IFE regulatory scheme that I, as an American cherishing the First Amendment, find off-putting. Banning campaigning several days before the election (which many European countries as well as Mexico do), banning publication of polls conducted more than 12 days before the election, banning foreign networks from making such references (which prompted Fox News, which has provided little reporting from Mexico, from transmitting its feed into the country from last Thursday to Sunday night): all these stick in my craw. But different countries have different ways of conducting democracy. Germany bans Nazi propaganda; it would be protected in the United States by the First Amendment, but we can understand why the Germans might take a different course. Mexico, with its history of electoral manipulation, bans certain political reporting. But we might do the same, for good reason, if we were in their shoes. History has its claims.
In any case, Mexico has a better system guarding against election fraud today than we have in most of the United States. Its voter ID program is much more rigorous. It has paper ballots, which take more time to count, but which also provide a paper trail for recounts. It has a national superintending electoral administrative agency, which our federal system of holding elections would not permit. All this is the legacy of PRI Presidents Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo, who calculated that Mexico could not take its place among advanced nations without a transparent and fair electoral system. They deserve great credit for the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another in Mexico in 2000, and for what appears likely to be the resolution of an extremely close fair election in 2006. Salinas voted quietly this year in Tlalpan and Zedillo in Pedgregal, rich neighborhoods on the south side of Mexico City, relatively unnoticed. But they are the worthy architects of this system, which is deserving of respect.
American politics has been poisoned over the last six years because many Democrats have believed that the Republicans stole the 2000 election for George W. Bush. Mexico faces the risk that many PRDistas will believe that PANistas stole the 2006 election for Felipe Calderon. This is a downside risk for democratic states in part because aficionados of left parties are more inclined than their opponents to believe, when they have been declared the losers, that they really won. They believe that they occupy the moral high ground as defenders of the poor (Lopez Obrador surely has a better claim on that title than America's Democrats) and because they are more open to the idea that powerful conspirators have manipulated the process (as opposed to Milwaukee Democrats taking advantage of election-day-registration laws by importing Chicago blacks to vote in marginal Wisconsin).
We Americans should await the unfolding of IFE's vote count. It will be significantly more reliable, I think, than the vote count in many American jurisdictions, and more worthy of respect. Particularly because Mexicans of various political persuasions have been working manfully (to adopt Harvey Mansfield's vocabulary) over the last dozen or more years to produce a fair and transparent election process. A Lopez Obrador victory will produce much trouble for the United States, although exactly how much trouble is uncertain; he would probably be less like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez than like Brazil's Lula da Silva. Moreover, a Calderon government would not be an unalloyed blessing for the United States; we have had our serious disagreements with Vicente Fox's government, and a Calderon government would not be much different. On the contrary, if he wins by a narrow and (however vociferously) disputed margin, his government might be more adversarial. If you believe, as I do, that Lopez Obrador's economic policies would forestall the growth and modernization of Mexico's economy, which is so closely linked to ours through NAFTA, then you should hope, as I do, that the IFE process produces a Calderon victory. But you should not bank too much on it. If, as I think possible, the United States dodged a bullet because Lopez Obrador lost crucial votes in the Mexico City metro area by a rainstorm an hour before the closing of the polls on July 2, then rejoice in that lucky chance and thank whatever god you think is responsible--keeping in mind that the Aztec gods might still not be entirely out of commission in the Valley of Mexico. But remember also that no Mexican government can be our lockstep ally, and that even as we work to fortify our border and enforce our immigration laws, we must also think how we can work in intelligent ways to strengthen the government in our neighboring Mexican--with 100 million people to our 300 million--whether it is led by a relatively friendly Felipe Calderon or--less likely it seems as I am writing than it was six or seven hours ago--a rhetorically unfriendly and politically wily Andres Manuel Lopez Obador.
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