Terrible Twos

Felipe Calderón celebrates the second anniversary of his arrival to the Mexican presidency today, which I remember being one of the coldest days I've ever seen here (maybe 35 or 38 degrees in the morning when I woke up). I'll have more about this later, but despite all the tribulations of the past several months, I remain extremely impressed that a president who barely won a third of the votes in 2006 and took the oath amid jeers and punching legislators has been able to accomplish as much as Calderón has. Excelsior has some polling on Mexicans' satisfaction with their president: 67 percent of respondents say Calderón has met or exceeded their expectations for his administration. In eight of nine different categories, ranging from combating drug trafficking to improving public health, more people today than a year ago call themselves very or somewhat satisfied with his performance; the only area where the measure of satisfaction declined was in job creation.