THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY IN MEXICO

Last month we discussed in Bad News for Hugo how the ugliest man in Mexico right now is Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  By getting voters to think that Lopez Obrador would be a Mexican Chavez if elected president this Sunday (July 2), Felipe Calderon has a chance of beating him.

It's a given in most every conservative mind that an Obrador victory would be a disaster for the US, and a Calderon one vastly preferable.  That's because Obrador is an anti-American Marxist and Calderon is a pro-American free market advocate.  It seems a no-brainer to root for Calderon.

I, too, will be rooting for Felipe this Sunday.  Regrettably, the odds favor Obrador.  We can hope he loses, but if he wins, we'd better start thinking fast how to turn the danger of his victory into an opportunity.

Let's start now.  Vicente Fox was supposed to be a free market pro-American guy, yet has overseen a tsunami of illegals flooding across our border.  Would Calderon (the candidate of Fox's PAN party) shut down the flood any more than Obrador?

Maybe – but let's ask why these illegals are flooding across in the first place.  It's to get two things:  jobs that pay much more than in Mexico, and US government welfare freebies.  Many would argue that the latter is a stronger incentive than the former.

Yet this is just what Obrador is offering, like free medical services for the poor.  His populist platform also calls for the creation of huge public works projects like road construction, which means lots of new government jobs.  His campaign slogan is: "For the good of all, for the poor first."

Obrador, it turns out, is offering poor Mexican campesinos the very same incentives to stay in Mexico that are now enticing them to flood into America.  Maybe we should be rooting for Obrador.

Well, no, because Obrador's anti-capitalist government-spending binge will end up doing grave damage to the Mexican economy – and then the flood will be worse than ever.

The key words in that last sentence are "end up."  This means there will be a window of opportunity for a couple of years after an Obrador victory during which there will be a severe drop off in the illegal invasion while the campesinos stay to scoop up Mexican government goodies.

The liberals of course will bray that the drop-off means we don't need a border fence any longer, and will pretend the drop-off is permanent.  Rational folks will know it's temporary – very temporary.  They will argue that the drop-off will give us only a breathing space, a short time to put in place a full shut-down Israeli Wall border protection fence from Brownsville to San Ysidro.

For only such Israeli Wall-type protection will dam up the tsunami coming after the collapse of an Obrador economy.

So don't be too disappointed if Obrador comes out on top this Sunday.  In the long run, it'll be bad, real bad.  But in the short run, it might be good – if we can take appropriate advantage of it.