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Jewish World Review July 5, 2000/2 Tamuz, 5760

Wesley Pruden

Wes Pruden
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No Mexican standoff
in these results


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- ONCE IN A WHILE John Kettle is wrong.

John Kettle is a philosopher from one of our better centuries, the glorious 18th, a man of prescience and remarkable insight: "When an opinion comes to be held by almost everyone," he once said (approximately), "it is almost always wrong."

Kettle is vindicated every day, but Sunday in Mexico we saw what may be the exception that proves the Kettle rule.

The Mexican election result is a remarkable achievement, as nearly everyone can see. All across Latin America, where democracy is often little understood and always fragile, there were sighs of admiration for the Mexicans who threw out the political party that has ruled — governed is much too mild a word — longer than any other party in the world.

Swept away was a legacy of fraud, avarice, hubris and corruption, along with a few good men, Ernesto Zedillo no doubt among them. They proved their own integrity by stepping gracefully out of the way when the earth moved.

The election of Vicente Fox as president promises a lot, and by winning, and by being allowed to win by the party that has ruled for 71 years, Mr. Fox has already delivered a lot. When he started his campaign three years ago, most Mexicans figured the old order would never allow itself to be humiliated. Fatal coincidences abound in Mexico, as they did in Bill Clinton's Arkansas, and some people thought he might not even survive — not survival as a politician, but with his life. Such is the legacy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.

Mexico joins Brazil, Argentina and Chile as the tiny coterie of Latin American nations that have enjoyed free elections over the past decade, and prospered for it. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil cabled (or however governments do it in the era of e-mail) his best wishes: "I congratulate you along with our brothers in Mexico for the serenity and exemplary democratic maturity demonstrated in this singular moment in your history."

From Argentina, an editorial in the daily newspaper Pagina 12 expressed the popular sentiment: "Clean elections in Mexico may seem like an oxymoron, but today the [Mexicans] have well approached the ideal."

And not only Latin America. Mexico joins South Korea and Taiwan as nations with dominant but defeated political parties that only yesterday imagined they would always rule simply because they always had. The old order in South Korea and Taiwan stepped aside without grudging because the old order not only saw the handwriting on walls that could once have been execution walls, but recognized that a new order was not only inevitable, but better.

Elections in Peru and attempted coups in Ecuador and Paraguay cast shadows over the democracies in Latin America, where so much of everything lives in the shadows. Bolivia struggled through a state of emergency in April and Paraguay suffered another in a dreary succession of military uprisings in May. The government of Colombia, perhaps suffering terminal narcolepsy, has watched its authority erode under a wave of corruption scandals in Congress and Cabinet.

Against all this the Mexican election promises to be a prototype. The result has to send a certain shudder down the spines of remaining tyrants, first among them Fidel Castro. The odor of the body politic (and probably Fidel's own body as well) becomes a greater affront to the times with every passing day.

The resurgence of manufactured hysteria in Cuba not only contrasts with Mexico's turning to the future, but suggests that Fidel sees chilling handwriting on his execution walls. Deprived at last of little Elian, who as expected has been packed off to an indoctrination school in a Havana suburb, Fidel nevertheless retains the daily two- and three-hour televised roundtable discussions where government officials and state journalists examine every detail of Cuba's bitter and endless argument with the United States. Imagine, if you can bear to, a daily three-hour session of the "McLaughlin Group" on all channels. Some Cuban officials who dare think such thoughts doubt that their government can keep up popular enthusiasm for an indefinite daily hate-America campaign now that the photogenic little boy is back in government captivity.

Events in Mexico are much more hopeful, especially to Cubans.

With Latin America's second-largest economy, just behind Brazil's, Mexico is envied throughout the region for its close trading ties to the United States, and, indeed, its close proximity to the colossus of the north. "Poor Mexico, so far from G-d, so close to the United States." Still, it's an affliction the rest of Latin America would die for. The wretched refuse of a continent can only dream of cuddling close to the United States.


JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up

07/03/00: Denting a few egos in the U.S. Senate
06/28/00: Bureaucracy amok! Punctuation in peril!
06/26/00: The water torture of American resolve
06/21/00: The happy hangman is a busy hangman
06/19/00: Dick Gephardt finds a Dixie dreamboat
06/14/00: Taking a byte out of innovation
06/12/00: 'Go away, little boy, you're bothering us'
06/07/00: When a little envy is painful to watch
06/05/00: Fire and thunder, bubble and squeak
05/31/00: South of the border, politics is pepper
05/26/00: Running out of luck with home folks
05/24/00: The heart says no, but the head says yes
05/22/00: A fine opportunity to set an example
05/17/00: The Sunday school for Republicans
05/15/00: Hillary's surrogate for telling tall tales
05/10/00: Listening to the voice of an authentic man
05/08/00: First a lot of bluster, then the retreat
05/02/00: Good news for Rudy, bad news for Hillary
04/28/00: The long goodbye to Elian's boyhood
04/25/00: Spooked by Castro, Bubba blinks
04/14/00: One flag down and two memorials to go
04/11/00: Consistency finds a jewel in Janet Reno
04/07/00: Here's the good word (and it's in English)
04/04/00: When bureaucrats mock the courts
03/28/00: How Hollywood sets the virtual table
03/24/00: Dissing a president can ruin a whole day
03/20/00: When shame begets the painful insult
03/14/00: The risky business of making an apology
03/10/00: The pouters bugging a weary John McCain
03/07/00: When all good things (sob) come to an end

© 2000 Wes Pruden