Zuckermann on Clinton

Zuckermann on some of the less controversial remarks from the former president:

And here is where the ex-president reminds us that maybe Mexicans are not as bad as we sometimes think. Think, he said, how your country has advanced in recent decades; everything today is better. Again Clinton left me thinking. And I ask you: Are there not many things in Mexico that are better today than they were a generation or two ago?

This is a point that bears repeating and is almost always ignored in the Mexican media. It's also a point that never gets made in the US media, although the impact of its absence is greater in Mexico because woe-is-meism about the state of the nation is much for pronounced, both among media elites and regular folks. Anyway, for all of the valid criticisms of Mexico's democratic transition, its bloody and uncertain crime policies, its hidebound political class, et cetera, et cetera, the nation is moving fitfully forward. It's hard to think of many areas in which the country is worse today than it was in 1990, in 1980, in 1960. This isn't argument for ignoring the above problems and the many pressing issues facing Mexico, but the despair about the state of the nation frequently goes overboard.