How a new Mexican leader will impact ties with US

More than 50% of the vote in this year’s fourway race likely to be won by Obrador

Mexicans electing a new president are politically united on just one thing: total contempt for Donald Trump.

So why do they seem intent on electing their own leftwing version of him?

That’s the larger question hovering over the expected victory of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, a populist firebrand making his third bid for the presidency. The former Mexico City mayor came within a hair of being elected in 2006, only to be routed at the next ballot in 2012. Now he’s coasting to victory, with Bloomberg’s polling average showing him winning more than 50 per cent of the vote in this year’s four-way race.

What is different in this election?

Mexicans are mad as hell at a system they see as selfdealing, underperforming and corrupt. That should sound familiar to Americans — not to mention Italians, Britons, and those in every other nation swamped by the populist tide. In Mexico’s case, they’re largely right.

Enrique Pena Nieto, the outgoing incumbent, came to office promising to cut the crime rate in half. Instead, Mexico suffered more than 25,000 murders last year, a modern record. He promised an end to corruption. His administration is suspected of spying on anti-graft investigators, and his wife was caught buying a $7 million mansion from a government contractor.

He promised economic growth of 6 per cent a year. It hardly ever got above 3 per cent. The average wage fell by about $1,000 during the Great Recession and hasn’t recovered since.

All this, while Mexicans have been vilified as rapists and murderers and freeloaders by the American president, who is also on record saying he couldn’t care less whether his policies hurt them.

How is Obrador similar to Trump?

AMLO’s popularity rests on the belief that he will end corruption, bring down crime, and redistribute ill-gotten gains to the people. How, exactly? Just as Trump declared at the 2016 Republican convention that he “alone” could fix a broken system, AMLO seems to have convinced his base that he can just make things happen. “Everything I am saying will be done” is how he punctuates his pledge to make government fair and honest. Trump promised to build border walls, win trade wars, keep us safe from terrorism and end Obamacare, all at the snap of a finger.

Can Obrador work with the US?

Some of AMLO’s sceptics take solace in the fact that in this campaign he has moderated his policies, modulated his tone, reached out to the business community and promised to work pragmatically with the United States. But it isn’t clear whether the softer rhetoric is anything more than an attempt to allay the fear (which factored heavily in his previous defeats) that he’s a Mexican Hugo Chavez. If he wins the presidency with big majorities, there won’t be an institutional check on his ambitions.

What are the foreign policy risks?

It especially doesn’t work out well when populist policies collapse — both domestic and foreign — on contact with reality. What typically follows isn’t a course correction by the leader or disillusionment among his followers.

It’s an increasingly aggressive hunt for scapegoats: greedy speculators, the deep state, foreign interlopers, dishonest journalists, saboteurs, fifth columnists, and so on. That’s been the pattern in one populist government after another. Now Mexico risks being next.