A Tale of Two Ranches

It’ll be sad, really, watching Jorge and Vicente go through the motions today. Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox will “summit” at the Crawford ranch, talk about the glories of NAFTA and pledge to toughen border security. They’ll even have Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin around to ease the awkwardness and help them avoid lingering on what might have been between two amigos.

Four years ago, it was a different ranch, a different era. Bush hadn’t been in office even a month before he rushed down to Fox’s place in Guanajuato. The two newly elected ranch-owning conservatives hit it off. Fox gave Bush a pair of boots and introduced him to his mother. Bush, the former border governor, agreed it was a “new day” in Mexican-American relations, and the two leaders kicked off ambitious negotiations aimed at overhauling U.S. immigration policy.

But even back then, in Guanajuato, there was a foreshadowing of things to come, of an American president’s inability to focus on his old neighborhood. On the day of Bush’s visit, U.S. warplanes struck Iraqi radar installations. Mexico couldn’t even have the day to itself.

Too bad, because the opportunity for a new Mexico-U.S. partnership was real. Having vanquished the long-ruling Party of the Institutional Revolution in the 2000 election, Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, desired change. Our “distant neighbor,” to recall the title of Alan Riding’s 1985 book, suddenly wanted to be our best friend.

Fast-forward four years, and the two countries have little to show for that initial euphoria. There is no immigration accord, no partnership to promote democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere, no comprehensive energy deal to pierce Mexico’s self-defeating barriers to foreign investment and lessen American reliance on Mideast oil. Bush, in the end, never even deigned to pay a state visit to Mexico City. He was too busy, if not in a snit over Mexico’s refusal to back the war in Iraq in the U.N. Security Council.

So here we are, talking only about such absurdities as whether Al Qaeda could exploit the border’s porousness. There is something about that 2,000-mile, often illusory line that makes politicians say the loopiest things. GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for instance, recently chastened Mexico City for “turning a blind eye” to the fact that its citizens cross illegally into the United States. As if Washington could do anything if Americans decided to leave en masse, without proper papers, for Canada. For his part, Fox is out of line when he decries U.S. efforts to erect walls and make it harder for people to cross -- that is Washington’s prerogative.

The Bush administration will soon regret not having capitalized on the opportunity for U.S.-Mexico change. Fox will be out of office by the end of next year and his successor -- possibly Mexico City’s leftist mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- will no doubt be far less eager to improve ties with Washington. Indeed, the return of anti-American populism is the latest hemispheric fad.

In fairness, Washington is not solely responsible for the souring of cross-border expectations. Fox’s politically motivated drive to speak for his country’s diaspora north of the Rio Grande -- including an estimated 6 million illegal Mexican workers, according to a Pew Hispanic Center study released Monday -- backfired here.

Bush’s never-acted-on immigration reform should not have become a bilateral issue. Finding a way to legalize the status of needed but undocumented workers in this country is, at heart, a domestic policy matter, not a diplomatic one. Allowing the Mexican government to act as immigration reform’s chief lobbyist in Washington, which it essentially did, was counterproductive, a gift to nativist anti- immigrant groups. Once Bush’s lack of backbone on the immigration issue became clear, farm groups, the Chamber of Commerce and labor unions should have led this fight. Fox seems to recognize this now. He said last week that his administration is no longer going to try to sell any change in U.S. immigration policy to the Congress.

Truth is, Fox has little to peddle these days except nostalgia for a gathering at a different ranch, in a different time.