They share a well-documented uncomfortable relationship but former U.S. President Bill Clinton nonetheless gave a wholesale endorsement of the policies of Barack Obama at this week’s National Democratic Convention. Out of office for almost 12 years, Clinton showed that he has lost none of his persuasive powers and confirmed again that the stock of ex-chief executives often rises once the White House has been vacated.
That’s not the case south of the border, where Mexican presidents, banished to a political black hole after six consecutive years in power, are treated as personae non gratae who are expected to keep their opinions private and toe the line of the party that propelled them to their lusty heights. History shows those who disobey are not only ostracized but often forced to flee the country for their own safety.
Such convention has little truck with Vicente Fox, the fiery rancher and former Coca Cola executive who ousted the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from power in 2000 and spent the next six years demonstrating an astonishing lack of political aptitude.
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