Not Up to Par

I've mentioned a number of times over the course of the flu epidemic how Felipe Calderón and Marcelo Ebrard did a good job communicating with and calming an anxious population. You may have noticed that I didn't ever mention Enrique Peña Nieto, who, as governor of the State of Mexico, ran an entity with more at-risk constituents than anyone in the nation aside from Calderón. The reason I didn't mention him much was because he was a ghost: I never once saw him on TV or heard a declaration of his on the radio. The only time I saw him mentioned in a news story was when he met with Calderón right after the outbreak broke out. Here's Macario Schettino's take on Peña's performance in last week's column (sorry, I got a little behind), which was broadly positive toward other officials:

The case is different with the governor of the State of Mexico, the great political victim of the health emergency. Whatever presidential aspiration that he had is now without sustenance. The public disappearance of the governor in a situation like the one just past can only be due to faintheartedness or pettiness: either didn't no what to do or he didn't want to do it. I don't think this is going to reduce the recognition or the popularity of the governor, which ultimately is derived from million-dollar propaganda machine (which, to be sure, no media outlet has investigated), but it does turn the governor into an impossible candidate. He showed an unforgivable lack of vision for someone who wants to govern the entire nation.