That perception has taken root across the country. The president’s once ambitious reform agenda has been blocked by a hostile Congress. The economy is a mess, partly because of the global recession. But top industrialists have lately begun blaming Fox as well; just recently, the head of the Alfa Group, one of the country’s largest conglomerates, publicly railed against what he called “the ineptitude of the current administration.” Once chummy relations with the United States have chilled over Iraq and Washington’s reluctance to sign a sweeping immigration accord. Halfway through Fox’s presidency, bets are already being placed on his likely successor. “Here we are in June 2003, and people are already talking about the 2006 elections,” says Francisco Abundis of the Parametria opinion-research firm in Mexico City. “It has to do with a sense of failure by the Fox government.”
Next month’s crucial midterm elections will likely reflect that verdict. All 500 seats in the lower house of the National Congress are up for grabs, along with six statehouses. Fox’s center-right National Action Party (PAN) is the favorite in only two of the state gubernatorial races. More important, almost no one expects the party to capture a majority of the congressional seats at stake. That means the legislative deadlock that has squashed Fox’s reforms will continue indefinitely.
To some extent Fox is a victim of his own success. Taking office in December 2000, he enjoyed approval ratings around 85 percent. Such was his charisma that even Mexicans who hadn’t voted for him bought into his talk of the coming “change” and a new era for Mexico. Few mortals, his defenders say, could have lived up to the stratospheric expectations that accompanied his rise to power.
Critics counter that the incoming president did little to prepare for the challenges ahead. As politicians go, Fox was always something of an outsider. The former Coca-Cola executive, who turns 61 next month, came to politics relatively late. When he was first elected to the federal Congress at 46, he had no clear idea what his new job would –entail, according to biographer Miguel Angel Granados Chapa. As president, Fox assembled a mishmash cabinet drawn from the ranks of business, the political right wing and even the PRI itself. Worse, he came to the presidency lacking the horse-trading skills that more experienced officeholders acquire over time–a shortcoming that became catastrophically apparent when his administration submitted a landmark tax-reform package to Congress in 2001.
To prevail in this first and decisive test, the new government had two options: negotiate a political pact with either the PRI or a leading left-wing party to gain the number of votes needed for passage, or else cow the opposition. Fox did neither, and his fiscal reforms quickly faltered. “The original sin of Fox and his team is that they’re a bunch of amateurs,” says Raymundo Riva Palacio, editor of the Mexico City newspaper El Independiente. “He never got himself ready to be president,” perhaps because he never really expected to win the election.
Can his presidency be salvaged? Fox has several things going for him. He still enjoys a 64 percent approval rating, according to the latest poll by the influential Mexico City daily Reforma. Inflation is under control, and the sluggish economy, which grew by less than 1 percent last year, may grow by as much as 4 percent over the next six months. And for all the snickering in Mexico City salons about the plain-spoken rancher in the trademark cowboy boots and ten-gallon Stetson, ordinary Mexicans still consider him a decent, honest and well-meaning person. He scored a lot of points with voters this spring when he resisted heavy pressure from the Bush administration to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Still, to regain his standing, Fox needs a sustained, full-blown economic recovery. An estimated 850,000 jobs were lost in the first year of his presidency; about 40 percent of the country’s 103 million people live below the poverty line. Part of the problem lies with Mexican business, which has drastically cut investment since Fox took office–chiefly for economic reasons beyond his control. But with the foreign investors who underwrite much of the economy, Fox has stumbled on his own. In Brussels last year, the Mexican leader spoke confidently of imminent plans to open up the state-run electrical-energy sector to private investment. No deal has yet been struck, and Congress shows no sign of wavering in its opposition. Bolder initiatives, such as privatizing major portions of the inefficient and graft-riddled oil industry, are unlikely to emerge any time soon. “Policymakers in Mexico just are not willing to move forward,” says Gray Newman, senior Latin American economist at Morgan Stanley. “That limits the pace at which the Mexican economy can grow.”
Mexico’s opposition parties share a big part of the blame. A recent study by the Private Sector Research Center, a think tank in Mexico City, accuses the PRI and other rival parties of sabotaging much of the government’s economic program over the past three years. Perhaps that’s just politics. But it’s also fair to say that Fox’s future depends on his winning the opposition’s support on key policies. And if Fox fails to take control of Congress next month, he’s almost certainly not going to get it.
Much depends on whether Fox and his government can pin their lack of success on their rivals. Opinion polls consistently rank the opposition-controlled Congress at or near the bottom of the country’s institutions in terms of public trust. Hence PAN campaign posters are urging Mexicans to take the brakes off change and vote for Fox’s party on July 6. At the same time, the government has belatedly opened a liaison office in the Interior Ministry dedicated –exclusively to building better relations with legislators in case Congress remains in enemy hands. Some analysts believe a quid pro quo could then be reached with the PRI if Fox agrees to increase spending on the destitute rural sector, where the once all-powerful party is strongest.
Mexico is without doubt a much more open and democratic society under Vicente Fox. Last week the president signed into law a freedom-of-information act giving human-rights activists, journalists and others greater access to classified government documents, and no one questions that the coming election will be free and fair. Problem is, during troubled times, voters want a man who can solve problems–and, like Ana Maria Sagaon, increasing numbers of Fox’s countrymen seem to be concluding that he’s not the one.
In the world of politics, where perceptions are everything, such sentiments don’t bode well. Journalist Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, Fox’s biographer, sums up the CW. “He’s a very good candidate, but not a very good president. He was always better at marketing than producing, only now his problem is that he has no product to sell.” Ouch. For Fox, unfortunately, that sounds too much like a political obituary.
