The Washington Post VS. AMLO

[Robbien]

BY FRED ROSEN/The Herald Mexico
El Universal
Lunes 07 de agosto de 2006

In its admirable efforts to provide diverse analyses of Mexico's complicated presidential campaign, The Herald Mexico has reprinted several comments from abroad, including a strongly anti-Andrés Manuel López Obrador Washington Post editorial last Saturday. The editorial is worth a few comments.

The Post, which has taken a strong dislike to Latin American "populism," characterizes the López Obrador (AMLO) campaign as one based upon "populist promises and posturing." This is empty name-calling. AMLO's campaign has called for greater public investment, in particular on the development of the country's physical and social capital, including health care, education and housing. He has argued that profitable private investment must be embedded in a legitimate social order, one in which a large majority of Mexicans can eat dinner on a daily basis. "Populist posturing" can also be called "social compact."

The editorial argues: "He repelled Mexicans who don't want their country to drop out of the 21st century." Beware of editorials that invoke the century (any century) as their ally. They are usually trying to close the debate before it starts. In fact, the free-market neoliberalism of Latin America's 21st century has created growing income inequalities both within and between countries. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow. There are two groups of Mexicans to whom the 21st century has been kind: the economically and politically well-connected, and those who have managed to make their way to decent jobs north of the border.

A search for alternatives does not imply a withdrawal from the century, but an attempt to humanize its course.

The Post: "Until the late 1980s, Mexico was an authoritarian state in which presidential elections were routinely rigged. Then the country's political elite, including López Obrador's party, came together to agree on a momentous political reform." But there was no polite "coming together" of the country's elites to reform the system. It was the intense mobilization of political activism by both the center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), including widespread PAN-led civil disobedience in the northern and western states that began to democratize the system.

That is the democratic legacy of the current round of civil disobedience

more . . .

http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=33647&tabla=articulos

[november3rd]

1. Touche, Fred!

Really nice rebuttals on the specific sleights of the WaPo. I only wish I had been reading a letter on their pages. Keep us "posted."

[drduffy]

2. god, I hate the neocons and their Washington Post

newspaper of neocon hubris and bullshit.

[adriennui]

3. which newspaper is more to your liking?

eom

[erik-the-red]

4. Washington Post?

I've always thought that most neoconservatives despise The Washington Post, although not as much as The New York Times. It's The Washington Times and New York Post they prefer.