America From Abroad : Dear Mr. President

Foreign policy may have played second fiddle--or second saxophone--to domestic problems in the U.S. presidential campaign that culminates today. But in fact, whether it turns out to be President Bush, President Clinton or President Perot, the man who occupies the White House for the next four years will spend a lot of that time coping with global issues.

What kind of advice is the winner likely to hear from the men and women who are paid to be America’s eyes and ears in foreign capitals?

World Report asked Times correspondents in Berlin, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Toronto and Tokyo to step into the shoes of the political secretaries of the American embassies in those cities and offer some tips in a memo to the new President . . .

MEXICO CITY

‘Please don’t refer to Montezuma’s revenge . . .’

So close, but so different. Cultural misunderstandings have been at the root of many problems between neighboring Mexico and the United States. There have been countless bloopers, but one that comes immediately to mind is the time President Jimmy Carter came south and publicly recalled a case he’d had of “Montezuma’s revenge.”

Whatever you do, Mr. President, don’t do that.

President Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari have gotten along famously, primarily because both are East Coast Establishment--Bush being a Yalie and Salinas a Harvard man. Salinas speaks English and understands the neo-liberal American mind.

Their rapport has paved the way for a North American Free Trade Agreement. The two countries share a strategy for the future. But economic integration does not automatically lead to cultural and political integration. U.S. presidents must understand the Mexican mind--and political system.

Mexican politics is centralized. Salinas’ power exceeds the dreams of Bush and Bill Clinton combined. If Salinas wants free trade, Salinas gets free trade approved by his obedient legislature. No muss, no fuss.

The president chooses his party’s gubernatorial candidates and, as we have seen recently, decides whether they may govern after their elections. Salinas has replaced a dozen governors, including three of his own candidates who won fraud-tainted votes.

The Mexican president is still king--and thus it behooves you, Mr. President, to get along with him. But Mexican society is increasingly diverse. To understand Mexico, the U.S. government should meet with all sectors of Mexican society. Salinas’ crowd may be preppie, but many influential Mexicans are not.

Salinas has done much to put anti-Americanism in the past and to put Mexican foreign policy in sync with U.S. interests. That doesn’t mean Mexicans have forgotten that Mr. Bush’s home state (Texas, not Maine) was once part of Mexico. Or the U.S. kidnaping of a Mexican citizen in Mexican territory. Nor does it mean that Mexicans want to be pushed around. It would be a mistake to lean too heavily on Mexico to join in the campaign against Cuba, for example.