Calderón's Speech and Other Random Observations

Felipe Calderón spoke to the nation last night, in which he was oddly hyperkinetic. I always sort of feel that way, because I was raised on the somber formality of the Oval Office addresses, but Calderón's hand gestures and vocal cadence were even more accelerated last night. That sounds critical, but it's not; it's just a different way of doing things. Overall, it was a good speech. 

At one point, Calderón offered another reminder of how different things are in Mexico:

Today, also, it became known the WHO, the leading organization in the world on the these problems and with which we have been acting in a very coordinated fashion and following their recommendations and instructions to the letter, has elevated the alert level for the entire world to which is called Phase 5. 

You'd never hear  a phrase in which the US came off as submissive before international organizations slip from a modern American leader's lips, no matter how dire the situation. 

You also see a similar distinction between the two nations in op-ed pages, which is odd, because we don't think about American newspapers as being bastions of nationalism. But consider: American scholars of Mexico and Latin America (such as John Bailey, Peter Hakim, and George Grayson among others) publish articles that deal exclusively with Mexico regularly in Mexican media. In contrast, in the States it would be odd to have a foreign expert on the US given weekly space to talk about US affairs. The closest I can think of is someone like Andrés Oppenheimer, but even he only talks about US affairs as they pertain to Latin America, and he's lived and worked in the US for decades, so he doesn't qualify as a foreign expert. Overall, I think Mexico's approach is more healthy. I'd love to see the NY Times or the Post or the LA Times offer monthly columns to foreign analysts of the United States.