The debacle seems so predictable that it’s hard not to imagine that Mr. Peña Nieto’s advisers deliberately led him to error, in a “House of Cards”-style plot. But the truth is likely one that is harder for Mr. Peña Nieto to find a quick fix for. His problems, including the Trump caper, reflect how ill-suited he is to govern a major country like Mexico.
The president’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., ruled Mexico for 71 straight years until 2000, through an all-encompassing political machine that the writer Mario Vargas Llosa called “the perfect dictatorship.” Mr. Peña Nieto won back power for his party after 12 years in the wilderness with the promise that it had changed into a dynamic, democratic party that would modernize Mexico. And he was its telegenic leader, with a soap opera star for a first lady. After he won office, newspapers predicted a forthcoming “Mexican miracle.”
But it gradually became apparent that Mr. Peña Nieto and his P.R.I. team were more of the same, representing entrenched interests and out of sync with much of their country. After cartel gunmen and police officers kidnapped 43 student teachers in 2014, the government failed to carry out a satisfactory investigation into the corrupt security forces, despite major protests. That same year it was revealed that Mr. Peña Nieto’s wife was buying a $7 million mansion from a company that received government contracts. He apologized, and his wife gave the house back, but P.R.I. politicians have resisted effective anticorruption laws, defying the popular mood.
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