Zepeda on Fox's Return

Jorge Zepeda Patterson sees Calderón's cozying up to Vicente Fox as an act of desperation, a tacit acknowledgment that his branch of the PAN can't get it done electorally.

Nothing better exhibits the political difficulties through which Felipe Calderón is passing than his decision to throw his arms around Vicente Fox and the group [of panistas] from Guanajuato.

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It's a decision that must have cost President Calderón sleep, and forced him to swallow a healthy dosage of his pride. And it shows that the PAN is entering the zone of desperation.

One poll after another reveals that the PAN will be erased by the PRI in the mid-term Congressional elections in 2009, which will further reduce the margins of operation in Los Pinos. The problem for the PAN is that in 2009 every one of the 300 districts goes to the polls, and in such terrain the PRI could presumably win 200 of them (let's not forget that it still governs 60 percent of the federal entities [i.e., local governments]).

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The SOS call to Fox is a strategy to gain time. The panismo of Calderón lacks the charisma or the leadership to successfully deal with the bad times that are gathering around it.

Zepeda overstates the PAN's weakness. As far as the 2009 mid-terms go, the PRI has put itself in a great position to make gains, but it's way, way too early to start calling Calderón a lame duck. I've seen no polling that makes a PRI wipeout seem likely, and tellingly Zepeda offers no specifics. The PAN remains the strongest party in Congress, and the president remains a very popular figure. One of its biggest competitors, the PRD, has all but fallen apart, and barely gets off the ground in voter identification polls these days. The PRI might, might be able to take over as the largest congressional bloc, but it'll almost certainly fall short of an absolutely majority. In such a situation, I don't see the PRI going back to a strategy of constant obstruction, as it did while Fox was in power. Instead, I think it'll continue with the constructive approach that has served it so well over the past two years (though the bargains the PRI drives will likely be harder). As far as the outlook for the presidency in 2012, there's no question that the PAN's potential candidates look weak right now, but a lot can happen in four years. Calderón was unheard of in 2002.

It's also odd to see Fox hailed as some paragon of electoral leadership. Th 2003 mid-terms were an unmitigated disaster for the PAN. As a popular president, he couldn't even shepherd his own man through the PAN primaries before the 2006 elections. And Calderón, while not endowed with the same sort of cowboy charisma that Fox deployed in 2000 (and then discredited through six years of clownish ineffectiveness), is a dogged campaigner. Just ask Andrés Manuel López Obrador.