Mexican politics, with all its populism and clientelism, is a stimulating lens for interpreting events in the Swamp of Washington, D.C. For example, Mexico City’s top radio news show now starts every day discussing whatever President Trump has tweeted so far. It’s a small world after all.
Still, Trump’s early-morning tweets remind me of populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (know as AMLO) strategy as Mexico City mayor: He would hold a press conference every single weekday at around 6 a.m. Most early news shows would start by discussing what he said. The rest of the day, pundits would discuss AMLO’s positions.
The left-wing icon who is currently taking Mexico’s presidential race by storm understands the same reality as Trump: Winning the news cycle is everything.
It is impossible to talk about the leftist AMLO without bringing up his self-declared arch-enemy: Right-wing former President Vicente Fox. You might know Fox for his videos slamming Trump. He alternates attacking the U.S. president one day and AMLO the other. Fox successfully pushed to impeach AMLO as mayor in 2005, which elevated the latter to martyr status and gave him a massive political platform for mobilizing his voters. He almost won the presidency the following year, and many still believe he did win.
Fox, a skillful communicator, has some other exciting bedtime stories for politicos in Washington. He won his election with a comfortable margin in 2000, becoming our republic’s first president from a party other than the PRI. His PAN party won 224 out of 500 seats in the House, and 60 out of 128 in the Senate. The voters’ expectations became insurmountable, but he always had Congress at hand to blame for his problems, and the PRI-led opposition played the role happily. Fox’s best years came after the 2003 election, which reduced his party’s seats in the House to a distant minority. A more adversarial Congress, which fit his narrative of opposition obstructionism, seemingly was beneficial for his approval ratings (with one exception: His ratings fell when he pushed for AMLO’s impeachment). And his party retained the presidency in the subsequent 2006 presidential election.
With the right narrative, a 2018 victory for Democrats could be a win for Trump, too.
Another of Trump’s moves that is a classic in the Mexican politics playbook is his protectionism. Courting labor unions with ad hoc policies is a daily task for some Mexican patronage-centered politicians. Whether Trump believes or not in his positions is irrelevant. The fact is that labor unions in the U.S. have been blue territory since the 1930s, and Trump is changing that with his steel tariffs and stance on trade.
I brought up this issue in a 2015 three-month-long seminar at the University of Chicago with David Axelrod and Matthew Dowd. The conversations were off the record, so I will not repeat their answer. I will say, however, that I walked out from the room thinking “maybe I don’t get U.S. politics.” But it turns out I had a point — blue-collar workers are sensitive to anti-free trade rhetoric after all.
Perhaps because both are expert players of populist politics, AMLO’s understanding of Trump sometimes seems quite nuanced. In a stirring 2017 speech in Los Angeles, AMLO explained his view of the U.S. president’s strategy towards Mexicans, which he believes has nothing to do with economics, but everything to do with politics. AMLO went on to say that Trump’s opponents underestimated the efficacy of his tactics of playing some groups against others for political gain. For that reason, AMLO believes, Trump is doubling down on a formula that has proven to be successful at winning the presidency.
While studying in Chicago, I worked in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office for a year. His brand of cynical wisdom is to be recommended for those trying to thrive in Trump’s Washington: You have to care less about winning arguments and more about political victories. That is the kind of lesson you get from Mexican politics, where public debate is less relevant than bargaining support from critical constituencies or misleading your opponents. Political communication is always strategic, even when you do not like what is out there.
Roberto Velasco-Alvarez, a former politician, was a mayoral fellow in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Office 2016-17, a chief of staff in Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly 2009-12. He now lives in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter @r_velascoa.
