Back in 1982, I was living and working in Mexico City and experienced my first presidential election south of the border. It was not much of a contest.  The ruling party, the PRI, won, with Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado elected and inaugurated president of Mexico.  He followed José López Portillo, a man so corrupt that most of my Mexican friends couldn't talk about him without using X-rated language.  It got to the point that López Portillo lived in seclusion because crowds would literally "howl like a dog" whenever he was around.  In fact, I heard those howls myself one day as he walked into an expensive restaurant in Mexico City. President de la Madrid turned out to be a decent man.  At least his wife (the first lady) was not in the news every week with her extravagant spending.  He left office with a decent reputation but couldn't break up the corrupt Mexican bureaucracy.  He...(Read Full Post)