III.

President

In the 2000 presidential election, Fox ran against Francisco Labastida Ochoa, the PRI’s candidate, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, the candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Fox won the election with 43 percent of the vote. It was the first time since 1929 that the PRI candidate did not win the presidential election.

Fox began his term as president with two distinct handicaps. He was elected without a majority of the popular vote, and his party lacked a legislative majority in the Mexican Congress. The PRI retained the largest number of congressional seats, with sufficient voting power to thwart most of Fox’s legislative reform initiatives. Two attempts at passing legislation to reform the fiscal system—including levying value-added taxes on food and medicine—were soundly defeated. Fox also promoted a measure to reform Mexico’s Constitution that would permit private investment in the nation’s energy sector. This was an extremely sensitive political issue that was vigorously opposed by a wide spectrum of Mexicans, especially many in the opposition and particularly the powerful PRI.

Midterm congressional elections in the summer of 2003 eroded support for Fox’s party, the PAN, with its share of the vote dropping to about 30 percent. This made it unlikely that Fox and the PAN could achieve significant constitutional and legislative reform during the last years of Fox’s term as president.

Fox also lost considerable political support early in his term when he promoted a new immigration accord with the United States, hoping to capitalize on his positive personal relationship with U.S. president George W. Bush. Fox wanted a system in which Mexicans could obtain temporary work visas in the United States to cut down on the problem of illegal immigration. This initiative was sidetracked for more than two years, however, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and heightened security and immigration concerns in the United States. Bush resurrected the plan again in early 2004, bringing Fox valuable political support in Mexico although the plan’s passage is likely to face stiff opposition in the U.S. Congress.

Despite a lackluster legislative record and little evidence of significant economic and structural change in Mexico, Fox remained personally popular with the electorate. He never succeeded, however, in instituting the dramatic economic reforms he envisaged. Nevertheless, as the first opposition party candidate for president to defeat the PRI, Fox’s legacy may well be significant simply as the president who led Mexico into a new age of democracy.