The Lamest Form of Political Horn-Tooting

With all of my being, I loath the political tactic, common among mayors and governors in Mexico, of ostensibly demonstrating success by simply pointing to a large number of tasks accomplished, with very scant attention to the quality of the tasks. The problem, of course, is that you can lower the bar enough so that not appearing before the cameras with toilet paper covering shaving cuts is an accomplishment, and leave office with six million compromisos cumplidos. That wouldn't, of course, make your tenure a successful one, because often in governing, one legitimately big accomplishment --say, balancing the budget, or reforming the police-- is worth more than millions of small ones. I thought of all this when I saw this fawning story about Enrique Peña Nieto's reaching the 508 pledges fulfilled. Quite the milestone.

Ex-mayor José Ángel Pérez was a big proponent of this approach in Torreón. I believe his big opening was 100 public works in his first 100 days. However, you'd be hard pressed to point to eight public building projects that were more complicated than a series of speed bumps, and as I've discussed in the past, the more complicated ones seemed needlessly costly and complicated. It's also noteworthy that despite his 100 projects, Pérez left office widely considered a failure.