Fox Not Shy in Touting Record

35,000 FEET OVER JALISCO STATE, Mexico -- From this altitude, one couldn’t blame Mexican President Vicente Fox for projecting a lofty, upbeat view of his nation’s economy.

Hurtling through a brilliant blue sky on the Mexican version of Air Force One, contemplating a cup of black coffee and an American reporter, Fox contrasted his nation today with the financial basket case that Mexico was a decade earlier.

Inflation is tame, he said. The budget is balanced. Mexican banks, which were hit hard by the mid-’90s peso crisis, are lending again. The nation’s output has more than doubled thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Fox downplayed Mexico’s dismal job creation and slipping competitiveness with China, which has surpassed Mexico to become the No. 2 supplier of imported goods to the United States behind Canada. More than 400,000 Mexicans a year continue to flee the country in search of better opportunities. It’s a stain that’s as embedded in the landscape here as the skid marks left by Fox’s jetliner on the runway back in Mexico City.

“We should keep to this road. We should keep to this path,” said Fox of his support for open markets, private investment and close ties with the United States. “It is rendering good results for Mexico.”

Barred by Mexico’s constitution from seeking reelection, Fox is winding down a six-year term. But the rush to shore up his place in history has just begun. Not content with the label some have given him as the president who ended 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico but accomplished little else, Fox is crisscrossing the nation to defend his record and remind voters of what’s at stake in July’s presidential elections.

Mexican law prevents government officials from using their office to stump for candidates. Fox is careful not to mention any of the contenders by name. But with leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador leading handily in the polls, the conservative Fox rarely misses an opportunity to raise the ghost of former President Luis Echeverria, who wreaked havoc on the economy in the 1970s by nationalizing industries and redistributing land.

“We paid a high, high price because of populism, because of demagogic proposals and because of irresponsibility on the budget,” Fox said. “No Mexican wants to even smell” that type of government.

Along with hot coffee and icy cans of the Real Thing, the former Coca-Cola Co. executive is serving up one-on-one interviews with journalists, whose invitations include a jampacked day on the road with the Fox farewell tour.

It’s a fast-paced trip through bustling factories, vibrant universities and gleaming public works -- a taste of the dynamic, modern Mexico that Fox laid out in 2000 but couldn’t deliver en masse. And it’s a chance to catch one of the final performances of a natural-born campaigner who still knows how to work a crowd.

Fox is particularly keen to cast himself as a careful steward of Mexico’s economy, one who is handing over a macroeconomic house so solid that it has largely eliminated fears of collapse that have accompanied past presidential elections.

Mexico was brought to its knees after the peso devaluation of late 1994. The crisis destroyed businesses, jobs and the life savings of millions of Mexicans. Interest rates on some consumer loans surged to more than 100%. Mexico was forced to go hat in hand to the United States for a $50-billion bailout.

The comeback in some respects has been stunning. Mexico in January posted lower inflation than the United States and is exhibiting budgetary discipline that puts deficit-addicted Uncle Sam to shame. The peso is stable. The stock market is on a tear. And banks are bombarding middle-class Mexicans with offers of credit cards and pesodenominated consumer loans at fixed interest rates -- something unheard of even five years ago.

“It’s certainty. It’s stability,” Fox said. “This is a big, big change in Mexico.”

The trouble, critics say, is that stability isn’t enough. What the country needs, they say, is fast economic growth, good jobs and lots of them to lift millions from poverty.

On that score, Fox has little to crow about. Gross domestic product growth has averaged less than 2% annually on his watch, while the underground economy of off-the-books street vendors and day laborers has been the nation’s only reliable job engine.

To be sure, 9/11 and the U.S. recession were millstones for Mexico, whose economy rises and falls with the fortunes of the United States.

Still, the financial team of Fox’s predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, managed to pull Mexico out of its peso crisis with financial discipline and strong GDP growth, which reached 6.6% his final year in office, said Alfredo Coutino, senior economist with Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pa.

“Fox inherited one of the healthiest economies” in Mexican history, Coutino said. “His administration only did half of their job.”

Fox blamed a hostile Congress for bottling up his proposals to loosen Mexico’s rigid labor markets, open its oil and electricity monopolies to private investment, rein in its unsustainable government pension system and boost the country’s pitifully small tax collection.

“If those reforms would had been accepted at the beginning of my term, today we would be growing at rates over 5%, and today we would be creating from 750,000 to 1 million jobs every year,” Fox said.

Still, some are perplexed at how little headway the amiable president was able to make, even taking into account his limited political experience.

“My biggest disappointment with this administration was the failure to engage the policymaking class to tackle these issues,” said Gray Newman, senior Latin America economist for Morgan Stanley in New York.

But Fox never lost his touch with the public, which still holds him in high esteem. Grayer, his face craggier and more careworn than it was six years ago, Fox has given up his trademark cowboy boots in a concession to his aching back.

On the plane, he looked a bit like an oversize Mister Rogers in an open-collar blue-and-white plaid shirt, black sweater vest, pleated black trousers and sensible lace-up shoes. But with his booming baritone, revolutionary’s mustache and 6-foot-4-inch frame, the chief executive still cuts a commanding figure.

On the grounds of ITESO, the private Jesuit university of Guadalajara, Fox was received like an aging but revered rock star by students too young to vote for him in 2000.

They arched their bodies over waist-high security fences as the lanky Fox drew near for a chance to grasp the president’s enormous hands, pat his back, touch his shoulders or kiss his cheeks. Bodyguards with telltale wires dangling from their ears looked on, anxiously at times, as youngsters with designer jeans and bare midriffs thrust cellphone cameras toward the big man on campus, who patiently mugged for photos and flashed the V for victory sign to shouts of “Fox, Fox, Fox.”

A veteran television reporter who regularly follows the president said the crowd reaction was unscripted and fairly typical. Among Fox’s admirers was communications major Daniela Altamirano, who said she would remember Fox as the maverick who at least battled the old power structure, even if he didn’t always win.

“He’s a lousy politician, but he’s good people,” the 19-year-old said. “We love him anyway.”