How the Blob Learns to Love a Foreign Politician

As a general rule, I don’t consider David Ignatius to be among the worst commenters in Beltway Blob land. But his profile of the Mexican politician Xóchitl Gálvez is a primer in how a foreign politician can build hugely powerful consistencies in Washington by playing American elites like a violin and telling them what they want to hear.

Now, before we get into this, we do have to forget about one key point here–Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is horrible. The president of Mexico was elected as a sort left populist, but he’s really best described as a Trumpian figure and with all the discipline of Trump too. While the other major parties of Mexico have sucked too for a long time, AMLO most certainly hasn’t provided any improvement. Whether dismissing Covid or dismissing the impacts of extreme heat in the North or dismissing the drug war deaths, AMLO does an incredible job of blaming bad news on others while centering political life in his own self. In Mexico, there is a long tradition going back nearly a century now that you get one six year term and then you are done. Since AMLO is basically a cult of personality, no one else in his “party,” if you want to call it that, has his personality and so there’s a strong likelihood that he is going to try and maintain influence while out of power. Gálvez has developed a hell of a knack for getting under AMLO’s skin, so he keeps attacking her and raising her profile, thus getting the attention of people such as Ignatius.

But the way Ignatius frames Gálvez is so disconnected from any understanding of Mexico that it really just becomes a way for her to play him to get her story across for powerful Americans who might support her without needing, wanting, or caring to know the first thing about her country. A couple of examples:

Gálvez is the leading opposition candidate running to succeed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Clothed in a simple embroidered dress during an interview here, she is by turns funny, profane and inspiring. As she explains how she battled off an attacker as a girl in the barrios, you can see why the populist autocrat López Obrador seems worried about her.

Gálvez describes how she had come to the capital after winning a math contest. She was living in Iztapalapa, one of the city’s most violent neighborhoods, preparing to study engineering. When a man tried to rape her at 17, she attacked him with a metal soldering iron. “When I beat that guy, I realized I was a brave woman. From then on, I have never been afraid of anyone.”

She certainly doesn’t seem afraid of López Obrador — or of the generals, corrupt politicians and drug lords who silently back his government. López Obrador has denounced her, his government has leaked her private business records, and he has claimed she is a tool of the rich elite. He has also attacked the national election commission that struggles to keep Mexican democracy alive and well.

“I have the ovaries to confront him. I hope you have the balls to follow me,” she recently told an audience in Chihuahua, according to one of her advisers. That’s the kind of comment that is disrupting Mexican politics.

I mean, good for her, but look at the things that Ignatius finds interesting. Basically, it’s American identity politics. She’s indigenous! She’s profane and uses the term “balls!” She’s brave! She’s held off an attacker! Which I mean, great, good for her, but that Ignatius finds this inspiring doesn’t actually have any meaning for Mexico.

Xóchitl (pronounced “so-cheel”), as her fans call her, keeps coming. Partly because of the president’s attacks, her name recognition and popularity have soared. And polls show she is likely to win a Sept. 3 primary that will select the opposition coalition’s candidate for the June presidential election. She has gained popularity because of her eccentricity — riding around town on an electric bicycle or dressing up as a Tyrannosaurus rex to dramatize López Obrador’s proposed election-law changes that she claimed bring back the “Jurassic era.” But she knows that her mission is deadly serious.

She has not gained popularity because of she rides an electric bike. It’s just that Ignatius thinks this is cool. She has gained popularity because AMLO has no self-control and keeps singling her out, thus engaging in massive unforced errors that has made her a more consensus candidate as the person to vote for if you don’t like him.

Now, does Gálvez has any policy positions that really make sense? Doesn’t particularly seem so, though Ignatius tries to handwave this away.

When I ask Gálvez what she would do about the cartels, she answers: “I will base my government on the rule of law.” Pressed for specifics, she responds, “A big problem is corruption and ineptitude [of the police]. It has generated impunity, and that has generated more violence.” She tells me she is drafting an “innovative” plan with specialists but won’t say more.

Gálvez is franker about the Mexican military, which has grown more powerful under López Obrador and is accused of using hacking tools to invade privacy. “The army spies on its citizens, and they spy on me,” she says. The generals have been used by López Obrador, she claims. “I know the army. They are not happy. They are exhausted — by immigration, by building airports, building railways [on government projects]. We need to get back to an army that does its business.”

I certainly don’t blame her for this–these are hard questions. But you’d think such things might matter. But let’s get to the real heart of the matter. Gálvez is a total neoliberal, AMLO for all his terribleness is very much not, and that’s what makes Ignatius happy.

Gálvez is an experiment in something we don’t often see these days — a populism of the center. Previous center-right reformers in Mexico became ensnared in corruption. She appears less vulnerable. “I’m rebellious,” she tells me. “No one can control me.”

What the fuck does “populism of the center” even mean? What does Ignatius even provide that suggests she would represent such a thing. She’s claims she is uncontrollable! Oh, she appears less vulnerable! Well, I am convinced she can’t be bought or be a tool of international capital since she says she won’t be! Wow, you can only get analysis like this in the Washington Post op-ed pages!

But then he moves right back to where he is most comfortable–promoting her in the context of American identity politics.

And then there is the unusual fact of her roots in the Indigenous community, which has suffered centuries of discrimination and poverty. She outlines for me a very ambitious program for social reform to make Mexico’s free-market economy fairer. López Obrador must know that he can’t really match her as a representative of the dispossessed.

“In our Indigenous culture, it’s believed that the only sin that leads to hell is to keep more money than you need,” she tells me.

I obviously have no idea what she actually told him. I can only read his column. But even within this, there is so much nonsense. First, which indigenous culture? Ignatius doesn’t even bother figuring out which indigenous group she belongs to. She is in fact part Otomi, but Mexicans have hundreds of indigenous groups. Do they all believe that the only sin that leads to hell is keep more money than you need? Do the Otomi actually believe this? Understand as well that Gálvez neither grew up in an indigenous village nor is even close to 100% indigenous. Who cares, right? Indeed, but I’m not the one trying to gin up support for a Mexican politician based on making American liberals feel comfortable about supporting democratic government, a free market, and someone who fits in very well to U.S. identity politics.

In short, while I have very few thoughts at this point about Gálvez herself, this is a prime example of how a combination of Beltway elite thought and ignorance about the finer points of the developing world can lead to building powerful support in Washington for politicians in nations like Mexico. I guess we haven’t moved too far from the days of the late 50s when the Eisenhower administration went all in for Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam because his Catholicism made the Beltway elite–from John Foster Dulles to Mike Mansfield–feel much more comfortable than it did with Buddhists.