Guest Column
Calderon: The tortoise and the hare
- Calderon: The tortoise and the hare
- By Dan Lund
El Universal
February 11, 2007 - Dan Lund is a market demographics and public policy researcher in Mexico.
- dlund@mundamericas.com
- Article at: http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/23360.html
President Felipe Calderón has projected the strategy of his administration: (1) not-being-Fox; (2) providing continuity with past efforts at reform but this time with the competence to bring them off; and, (3) presenting himself as a strong wartime president in full combat command against organized crime and the drug cartels.
The first two elements of President Calderón’s governing strategy are arguably well founded in the context of Mexico today; not-being-Fox and providing continuity with competence may be good ways to proceed for a conservative administration.
The third element, the wartime presidential strategy, might produce some short-term positives, but it is a minefield of political problems down the line, as we can see from the daily reports of ongoing executions in the drug cartel areas.
STAYING THE COURSE
Vicente Fox began his administration as president with a burst of energy and ran out of steam early on.
Calderón seems comfortably anti-charismatic, and persistent.
He gives the impression that he aims to stay the course, building an image as president step by step. Calderón is the tortoise to Fox’s hare.
While Calderón is self-consciously establishing himself as “not-Fox,” he is offering continuity in every policy area, without exception.
In fact, a review of his first two months shows the same travel itinerary, the same broad themes, even the same wording of projects promoted as the previous president in his first two months of office.
An important difference is that Calderón has not benefited in public support from the “democratic bonus” that Fox enjoyed — that is, an unprecedented surge of enthusiastic hope that came with the end of PRI hegemony in the presidency.
At this point in his administration, Fox was in the high 70 percent range of approval, although he finished out 2001 with an average approval of 64 percent.
INITIAL POLLING DATA
As for Calderón, the poll numbers on his approval are only now beginning to come out.
From what we have been able to glean from unpublished or closely circulated polls, the approval level for Calderón in early December was flat.
It bumped up with the first use of the military, then went down over tortillas.
Ever since we began to observe or participate in polling in the late 1980s, it has been the case that the basic approval question (“In general terms, do you approve or disapprove of the way the president is doing his job?”) elicits a very consistent response — more or less, 60 percent approval.
Fox averaged 58 percent over the course of his six years as president.
Other questions relating to specific policies or issues tend to have much more texture.
The most recent EL UNIVERSAL/IPSOS Bimsa poll is in this pattern: 58 percent approval for the president in general, that is at exactly the overall average for Fox, perhaps confirming the continuity thesis.
But, the devil is in the details, and the poll shows a profound division of 43 percent agreeing that his efforts benefit all Mexicans, against 41 percent saying his efforts only benefit the most privileged.
Further, the poll found only 36 percent feeling that his work has been effective in achieving results, while 34 percent noted that Calderón has been effective with regard to tortilla prices.
This has the looks of a presidency struggling to find its base of support, and counting on the tortoise strategy.
Where is the key point of opinion leverage for Calderón?
It is likely to be in the area of the economy, where opinion is most sensitive.
However, with the general economic situation as mixed and gray as it is, Mexico is not going to have much bounce for which its president can take credit.
His best bet is probably on the untouched side of the modern liberal agenda — the opening of economic markets. Monopolies and oligopolies abound in Mexico.
It often feels like competition is an integral part of Mexican life and culture because many people struggle fiercely for limited opportunities, and many micro- and small companies compete ferociously for limited contracts.
However, the big players on the controlling heights tend to cooperate and protect, and do not compete or innovate.
Opening the closed sectors will probably be the measure of the new president.
But, where to begin and how to order the priorities of market reform?
PROBLEMATIC SECTORS
There are a couple of problematic “monopoly” sectors on the public side in energy production and distribution.
And, there is more than a handful of monopoly or closed market sectors on the private side, notably in beverages and foodstuffs, construction materials, telecommunications and television broadcasting.
At this point, to take on the “public monopolies” and leave the private monopoly sectors alone is to complicate matters in public opinion and support.
To take on all the monopoly sectors at once is too much, even if the president were to be wildly popular with strong confidence ratings.
However, unless the president moves early to take on at least one of the private monopoly sectors, it is hard to see how he can develop the credibility for the long delayed reforms in other areas.
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