United States of Who?
Turns out the world doesn’t obsess over the prez
YOU might think, given President Trump’s habit of being all Americans talk about, plus the fact that we’re in the midst of a debate over immigration and a border wall, that folks in Mexico would be laser-focused on The Donald. Yet, as a presidential campaign is getting in gear here, newspaper polls aren’t even asking voters about Trump.
Sure, the fate of immigrants and dreamers affect many Mexican families. And those ugly insults Trump still occasionally hurls at Mexicans hurt. Mexican voters’ favorability ratings of the US government have dropped. And Mexican tourism to the United States is down.
Yet, as Mexico’s July 1 presidential campaign looms, Trump is all but non-existent.
Take the leading favorite to win the presidency, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known affectionately here as AMLO). He’s a far-left, USleery populist and a perennial candidate. But even he isn’t running on an “I’ll show Trump once and for all” platform.
True, AMLO insists his presidency won’t be ruled by foreign influence — “Not Maduro, not Trump,” as he says. But that’s mostly to allay widely held fears in the business community here that he’d emulate the failed Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, an heir to Hugo Chavez.
One concern is that he’d overturn energy reforms allowing foreigners to invest in the local oil industry. Otherwise, instead of focusing on foreign bogeymen, Lopez-Obrador sticks to promising campaign goodies — free education, pensions to seniors and the eradication of corruption in the Mexican government. He also claims he’ll fix infrastructure vulnerable to earthquakes and end the country’s dependence on agricultural im- ports — all without raising taxes or increasing public debt.
Then there’s Ricardo Anaya, leader of a centrist coalition. He’s smart, young and ambitious, but lacks charisma or name recognition.
Anaya recently recorded a video in excellent English calling on Trump to legalize the status of socalled dreamers and recognize the contributions of 35 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States (“more than the population of Canada”).
But that seemed more a formality than a campaign plank. As one of his top aides told me, Anaya is much more interested in pulling Mexico out of poverty and corruption, including by instituting a universal basic income.
Trump also isn’t the top issue for Jose Antonio Meade, the candidate of the ruling party, PRI. Meade has to convince voters that he’s no Enrique Pena Nieto, the current president and fellow PRI leader who’s been tainted by numerous corruption scandals.
A top Meade adviser told me his candidate is a “technocrat,” who’d fight corruption. Good luck convincing Mexicans of that.
What these candidates almost never talk about is how to fight Trump’s America. Nor do the people here. Their world doesn’t revolve around the American president.
As a friend here told me, at first Trump shocked everyone, but “now we basically ignore the clown.”
Obviously, Americans don’t have the same luxury of ignoring their own president, so it’s not as if the Mexican people have discovered some sort of cheat code for retaining your sanity in the Age of Trump.
But Mexicans are a repeat target of Trump’s, so their ability to compartmentalize their lives and put him out of mind is a good example for stressed-out Americans: obsessing over Trump is unhealthy.
More than that, it’s a good reminder that Trump is rarely the dominating presence in other countries’ political debates that his critics here at home often portray him as. Trump’s ill-mannered mien hasn’t turned the world upsidedown after all.