In 2006, the PAN campaign infamously launched a barrage of ads denouncing AMLO as a "danger to Mexico." Whatever one thinks or thought of AMLO, rejecting one's major political opponent in a democracy as a "danger" - one that had successfully governed Mexico City for five years, and was backed by more than a third of the electorate - was a despicably low blow that exposed the PAN candidate as highly contemptuous of the Mexican electorate. It was, to be sure, also condemned by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), which banned several of the most offensive attack ads.
In the Mexican context, a president should be above petty political fight, yet Calderón in an interview yesterday with the (excellent) journalist Salvador Camarena, openly defended the 2006 slogan as "true and valid," and the AMLO moreover remain a danger to Mexico.
While it may seem strange from a US context of heavy campaigning from the White House, relatively clear rules regulate how much the president can do of active political proselytizing. Yet even more so, such direct criticism of AMLO, a man who today holds no elected office or appointed position, is simply petty and unworthy of the president; it should be beneath him.
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