Knifing Each Other

The resignation of Germán Martínez has done nothing to calm the waters inside the PAN. Excélsior ran a long article about the finger-pointing inside the PAN today, with complaints surrounding the selection of candidates, the closeness of Martínez to the president, and the marriages of convenience with unsavory characters like Valdemar Gutiérrez.

Incredibly, Vicente Fox sent a letter to Jorge Fernández Menéndez in which he laid the blame for the losses at the feet of his fellow panista, Felipe Calderón. One of the quotes from the letter, whose third-person form offers a hint of Fox's narcissism:

President Vicente Fox during his term worked constantly close to the population. Today the people are demanding that closeness from the authorities.

This, even more incredibly, seems to have led to a narrative that Fox knew how to govern, and Calderón doesn't. (Perhaps I overstate the prevalence of said narrative, but article linked above was rife with the sentiment.) This is simply insanity. The popular impression of Fox was, Nice guy who didn't know how to operate at the highest levels of Mexican politics. The only problem with that characterization is the first part. Fox's legislative achievements were surpassed by Calderón in the latter's first year in office. Fox's mid-term elections in 2003 were every bit the disaster that Calderón's were on Sunday. Fox couldn't get his preferred candidate through the PAN primaries in 2006. He was the manager of the famous Montessori cabinet. Fox operated during a much friendlier economic climate, but growth was consistently disappointing. One label that simply does not apply to Fox is "capable manager and smooth political operator whose government was always close to the people."