She’s Not Mexico’s Hillary Clinton, Yet

According to Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything, and Mexico’s first lady, Marta Sahagun, believes that hers has arrived. Given that President Vicente Fox is limited to one term and cannot run again, his wife wants to take his place. Instead of denying rumors of her presidential ambitions for the 2006 election, she has been fueling them. When asked if she’d rule out running, she answered, “No me descarto” (“I don’t rule myself out”). As Mexico’s disillusionment with her husband grows and politicians of all stripes talk of succeeding him, Sahagun has suggested that being the “co-president” is not enough. Her eyes are on the presidential prize. But they shouldn’t be.

Throughout Fox’s administration, Sahagun has shunned a ceremonial role and acted more like a political partner than a presidential spouse. Even before she married Fox, she participated in his campaign and was his official spokeswoman.

She has wanted to be like no other first lady Mexico has known: more influential, more beloved, more admired, more visible. She aspires to be the woman behind the throne and the woman sharing it. At the helm of the charitable foundation she founded, Sahagun has assiduously cultivated her image. She seeks to be known as the Mexican Evita and would like to be as revered as the Argentine do-gooder was. She distributes bicycles to the poor, poses for the cameras, defends Fox, promotes his reform initiatives and writes open letters musing about midterm electoral results. Through her constant media presence, she has become more popular than Fox.

Now, as her recent statements about the ’06 presidential race indicate, Sahagun wants to build a political platform of her own instead of simply standing by her man. As succession fever rises, she says she will make a “responsible decision” based on the people’s wishes and that Mexico is ready for a woman president. But the first lady’s unbridled ambition is hurting her husband and could hurt the country she repeatedly says she loves.

As Sahagun’s public stature grows, Fox’s political strength shrinks. The attacks against the fundraising practices and irregular finances of her foundation are spilling over to taint Fox. The more she insists on co-governing, the more she gives the impression that she is tugging Fox along by the ear. Many Mexicans perceive that she gives the orders and he follows them. And, by alluding to a possible run in 2006, Sahagun is reinforcing the widespread impression that her husband will accomplish little between now and then.

Aside from the damage a Sahagun presidential bid would inflict on Fox’s government, it would also create conflicts of interest that Mexico doesn’t have the institutional capacity to face, nor should it have to. The country has spent 10 years and millions of dollars trying to rid campaigns of nepotism and influence-peddling and to ensure equal competition among political parties. For Sahagun to use her spousal status to propel herself into the race would toss that hard work out the window. As first lady, she has tremendous access to public resources and private media that would provide her with unfair advantages, skewing the contest before it even began. Sahagun’s using her personal position as a political trampoline would be even more egregious than Fox’s trying to anoint his interior minister, Santiago Creel, to succeed him.

But more important, Sahagun would enter the race without knowing what to do if she actually won. The president’s wife is a popular figure but not a politically prepared one. She enjoys the support of the population but wouldn’t have a clue how to govern it. To “love Mexico deeply” is not the same as having a vision for the country’s future. Crisscrossing the provinces handing out computers is not the same as designing an industrial policy to produce them.

So before she compares herself to Hillary Clinton, as she is prone to do, Sahagun should follow in her footsteps and win a race of her own, on her own.

Denise Dresser is a professor of political science at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and director of the “North American Future” project at the Pacific Council on International Policy.