U.S., Mexico Must Move On

What partisans mangle, presidents often get called in to fix. And so it is with the vital but strained U.S.-Mexico relationship, sorely in need of renewed vision and leadership. President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox will meet in a few weeks, and they need to get their nations past two huge stumbling blocks -- Iraq and immigration -- that banged up the nations’ dealings badly, and unnecessarily, in 2003.

Recent headlines tell of the simmering tensions between the two nations. Late last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was “outraged” to hear that Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, then Mexican ambassador to the United Nations, had said that many in Washington considered Mexico the U.S. “backyard” and treated it in dismissive fashion. That remark led to Aguilar Zinser’s firing. His ouster, though, was seen less as a slap for his candor than as a gesture to the Bush administration, which the tart-tongued diplomat had aggravated as he articulated Mexico’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The real problem wasn’t Aguilar Zinser but the hard-line stance the U.S. took on its allies’ support for or opposition to its invasion of Iraq and Mexico’s insistent embrace of a half-cooked yet sweeping immigration deal that would have legalized millions of Mexicans living in the U.S. The immigration deal clearly could not be a priority for an American president engaged in a big and distant war. But Fox also couldn’t make his people accept a U.S. adventure overseas that they widely opposed. And with partisans on each side pressing their one topic, what once had promised to be a stronger, warmer U.S.-Mexico relationship instead got frosty.

Officials from the Bush and Fox administrations, quietly, kept working together. How could they not, with billions of dollars in trade, the border, illegal drug trafficking, environmental concerns and other issues still at stake? But more needs to be done. On Jan. 12, when Bush and Fox meet in Monterrey, Mexico, for a summit of the Americas, both presidents must make time for private talks to pave a new path for the two nations’ future. It’s time for the countries again to be inseparable and grown-up partners.