Pamela Cerdeira

The best president in history

The ambition to have a place in history as one of the best presidents also seems to me to be excessive and, above all, dangerous.

By Pamela Cerdeira

"...I have a legitimate ambition: I want to go down in history as one of the best presidents of Mexico."
López Obrador, February 19, 2021

Lopez Obrador's "legitimate ambition" always caught my attention, first because it is framed in the imaginary that if ambition is material, then it is illegitimate. This is not fortuitous, historically the ambition of politicians has been economic and excessive, however, the ambition to have a place in history as one of the best presidents, also seems to me to be excessive, and above all dangerous.

If Enrique Peña Nieto's ambition was to become president in order to amass a great fortune, as was the case with most of his predecessors, the greatest risk for the nation is corruption. It is not a lesser evil, corruption kills, it is more than proven. But we know what he wants, and what moves him: money.

In the case of President López Obrador (who is no stranger to money, even if it is not to buy expensive suits and houses in Europe, it is to build a movement and win elections), the confession is not minor. What moves someone who recognizes his role in history as an ambition? Ego. And ego is the devil's gasoline.

I had this conversation with Marilú Acosta, who pointed out that in order to be remembered as the best president in history, he had to do things that were good for Mexico, so "legitimate ambition" was not necessarily a red light. The reading that history will make will take time, but if the elements that are built from power today were to be counted on, the popularity figures would be proving him right, and then to go down in history as one of Mexico's best presidents, above all, an immense communication campaign must be carried out: two to three hours of daily broadcasting on television, appearing in all the newspapers, being the topic of conversation, having an army of bots to defend and repeat the official version. And to build the discourse that any mistake is the fault of the past, or exaggeration of the adversaries.

I do not forget that Mañanera in which, at the beginning of the pandemic, reporters asked him if he could do the conference online, so that they could continue covering from home without risking contagion: "No, no, because I like it that way," was the response of the humanist from Palacio .

The day after the media and journalists pointed out that the president not only did not answer a question about the young people of Lagos de Moreno, but also made fun of them by making a joke, he started his morning show like this: 12 minutes to victimize himself, 4 minutes to talk about his popularity in the Moring Consult poll, and then, just because he was questioned twice, 1 minute and 40 seconds he talked about the young people of Lagos de Moreno. This is a man who is more concerned about the direction his name will take than that of the country he holds in his hands.

His ego explains his obsession with destroying everything that did not bear his name: Seguro Popular, the Texcoco airport and the mechanism for the purchase of medicines; it also explains absurd purchases such as Mexicana, to operate an empty Santa Lucia airport, and his blindness to the country's most painful issues.

Someone driven by his ego will put himself in the place of the victim and the hero, he will not recognize a single mistake, so he will not change course and as we saw last week, he will never apologize.