Not The News: Typecasting

If voice and content choice mean anything, the following three paragraphs tell much about why the world's contempt is aimed not just at the Bush administration but also at American voters for refusing to take seriously their role in enabling their government to do what it does.

The text is from the introduction to the current U.S. politics issue from Inside Mexico, a free monthly written by, for, and for the most part about Americans living or visiting Mexico:

* * *

"At T minus 14 months, elbows are flying and campaigning is red hot! It's all good for political junkies who can't get enough of John McCain's freefall, Hillary Clinton's cleavage or Mitt Romney explaining that what he said wasn't really what he said.

"Race, religion, gender and family histories are big. Democrats may choose a woman, an African-American or a Mexican-American, the bona-fide chilango Bill Richardson, while Republicans mull a Mormon or multiple divorcees.

"Believe us, it doesn't get any better than this. It's been decades since a U.S. presidential race has been so wide open, unpredictable and fetchingly cast. It's a racy, page-turner of a campaign and Inside Mexico is watching every cliffhanger, climax and anti-climax for you."

* * *

I've read teasers less cheeky in tone for Playboy's anniversary issues. Hey, it's voting season. Let's party!

Seeing it all as gossipy entertainment is, of course, the media norm, including in Mexico. On request, I submitted to Inside Mexico a short essay mentioning that point, among others. The piece was apparently too weak in the cleavage department to make it into their U.S. politics issue, so I reproduce it here:

* * *

What We Talk About When We Talk About U.S. Presidential Candidates
BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT

You hear it said, and not always in jest, that the world at large should be eligible to vote in U.S. presidential elections. It’s the world at large, after all, that feels the effects — for better or worse.

Nobody understands those effects better than Mexicans. Their economy is in lockstep with their northern neighbor. About 10 million of them live in that neighbor’s territory — some legally, some not so legally, all at the mercy of the U.S. political winds. And, lest we forget, a history of southward-directed U.S. transgressions is fresh in the Mexican mind.

So Mexico clearly has a stake in who becomes the next U.S. president.

And now here comes the 2008 vote. Given its unprecedented relevance for Mexico, Mexican citizens on both sides of the border will be involved as never before, scrutinizing the candidates’ positions, analyzing policy proposals’ implications for Mexico, and influencing their much-coveted ethnic brethren, the Mexican-American voters.

What's interesting about the paragraph you just read is that almost none of it is true. It seems true. Maybe it should be true. And it will undoubtedly be presented as true by a breathless Mexican media.

But if you talk to pollsters — that is, folks who actually measure how the population thinks rather than cling to set assumptions about it — you get a different picture. The average Mexican citizen, like the average citizen anywhere, has enough to think about without dissecting the details of another nation’s political battles.

That same average citizen can also be forgiven for believing that from Mexico’s point of view, it won't matter much who wins.

“There's a fatalism at work but it’s a sophisticated fatalism,” says Dan Lund, president of the Mund Americas public opinion research firm in Mexico City. “It’s not a bad way to look at the world.”

Roy Campos, president of Consulta Mitofsky and probably Mexico's most prominent polling professional, puts it more concretely. “They don't know or care what a Democrat or a Republican is,” he says. “The United States is the United States, period.”

Which is not to say there’ll be no buzz here around the contest. Televisa and TV Azteca, the network duopoly whose programming is seen in both countries, will make sure there is. A national election campaign — here or there — is big-time television. It’s the World Cup and Miss Universe combined, and it lasts for a year. It’s going to get milked for all it’s worth.

“The stake that Mexico may have in the election will get overhyped and abused by Televisa and TV Azteca, especially by the anchors, with their pompous superficiality,” Lund says.

Thus the U.S. election will be seen here as one big TV show. That means character over content, type over policies. “Hillary or Obama will be very attractive to the Mexican media, but it will have nothing to do with their positions on anything,” Campos says. “One’s a woman, one’s a man of color, and that will be the story.”

Academics, print columnists and the chattering classes on late-night television will inject some substance. But they’re not widely read or heard, except by each other. And many tend to fall into the trap of overplaying the personal.

“When Bush won in 2000 it was viewed here as historically important because of his supposed closeness to Mexico, based on his having a Mexican sister-in-law," Campos says. “Personal things were given more importance than actual policies.”

A more recent example: In the critical weekly Proceso, the usually brilliant writer/director/journalist Sabina Berman characterized the U.S. Congress’s failure to pass the immigration reform bill as “like saying [they] don't give a damn about 12 million illegal immigrants.”

Alas, too many don’t. But the bill’s fate was actually sealed by liberal Democrats who considered it too punitive. In other words, it failed because a significant segment does indeed give a damn.

In Berman's piece, though, as in so many others, the struggles of a divided nation trying to come to grips with an out-of-control situation are ignored in favor of the standby applause line: “They don't like us.”

While we’re on the subject, a U.S. candidate’s immigration stance may not be the deciding factor in his or her popularity in Mexico. Obviously, a candidate who opposes walling the border and supports legalization will be looked on more kindly here, but that won’t be the end-all and be-all.

“Immigration is not a make-or-break issue at the popular level in Mexico,” Lund says, referring to its impact on how the U.S. presidential candidates are judged. “The media will paint it that way, but calling it that is to fall into the most superficial of arguments.”

Insofar as it tilts at all, Mexico has historically tilted toward the Democrats — a case of a country that was once social-democratic leaning toward a party that was once social-democratic. The rise of the market-minded National Action Party, with its ideological ties to the Republicans, changes the picture, and you can expect PAN politicians to back (tacitly, of course) the GOP candidate. But that’s not the same thing as saying that those who voted for Calderón will prefer a Giulani or a McCain. It doesn’t work that way.

If there’s a unifying issue influencing Mexico’s perception of U.S. candidates, it is war and peace. In general, Mexicans, like most of the world, are genuinely horrified at the Bush administration’s military adventurism. They are also loyal to their nation's historic policy of non-intervention. “My reading of Mexican public opinion is that this is a society that is against war,” Lund says.

For the most part, however, Mexicans will approach the U.S. election as a spectator sport — exciting and important, but ultimately somebody else’s ballgame. “Once the candidates are known next year, I’m going to do a survey asking people to name each one’s party," Campos says. "And they’re not going to know.”

Now, if you're an American bewildered by Campos’s prediction, take the following quiz:

1. What's the name of the Canadian prime minister? 2. What's his party affiliation? 3. Who did he defeat in the last election?

How’d you do?