Back to politics, holmes

Well, now that the World Cup is over, I can return to thinking about politics.

For starters, I'd been glued to the Mexican election results when there wasn't a game on. PAN candidate Felipe Calderon (successor to the current Pres., Vicente Fox) eked out an apparent victory by half a percentage point - this is after the obligatory recount following a narrow victory in the preliminary results. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-leaning candidate (and former mayor of Mexico City) has vowed to dispute the results, Algore-style, even though the non-partisan election commission has stated the results are irreversible. We'll see what happens, but I hope AMLO's beef peters away and Mexico proves that they can join the rest of the developed world in peaceful democracy by holding a fair election that all parties can recognize.

What does this mean for the US, provided the results hold up? Well, Calderon is a free-trader (well, more of a free-trader than AMLO), which is the best news for us unless you are one of those protectionist psychos who says Mexicans are stealing all our jobs, in which case I recommend you get a little refresher in economics. In fact, the red/blue (well, blue/yellow) map of Mexico shows that border states favor Calderon, as they are the ones that benefit most from free trade. (I'm also happy to say that all Mexican states to which the wife has relations - Baja, Jalisco, and Chihuahua - all favored Calderon). So, it can only mean good news because 1) it demonstrates our influence on our southern neighbor that they can now hold a peaceful and fair election, and 2) free trade is good for both countries. In terms of the border, however, both candidates were not seeing eye-to-eye with US. Well, you can't have everything, I guess. The best thing to do is to just let free-trade raise the level of both countries to the point that they stop exporting their poor to us. In the meantime, we'll guard our border and say, "sorry, Felipe, but we gotta do what we gotta do."