Otto Granados Roldán
For now, no one knows for sure what Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration will be like. We have some names of staff members and a set of phrases, commonplaces, assumptions, and good wishes. The usual routine in changes of government. But to put it correctly, from a political, technical, and psychological point of view, she seems to be an original woman. To dispel the doubt, we will have to await the almost perfect admonition of Sophocles: “It is impossible to know the soul, the feelings, and the thoughts of any person if we have not seen them act in power and in the application of the laws”.
What is quite concrete, however, is the thickness of severe and very grave problems that she will find -which cannot be solved with ideological labels or clichés or surveys- everywhere, the first of which is her own advocate, who has already become a burden -that should be examined- not only for her own autonomous decision making but, more importantly, to be rational, expert and effective for the next government, at least for the pursuit of reasonable objectives for the country. Let’s see.
All rulers cherish the fantasy that their legacy will remain for posterity, whatever that means. But in modern history, few have succeeded. That is why, when the new president takes office on October 1st, López Obrador will begin to reap what a wise former Mexican president called “the rotten fruits of the season”. It is the mysterious and, at the same time, pathological cycle of power: the ambition to attain it, the yearning to keep it, and the torment of losing it. This time, it will be no different.
When they take office, leaders begin by learning what the job is all about; later, they become aware that they can make decisions that affect, influence, and impact, and therefore, tend to hand out favors and punishments at their discretion; then they internalize this whole process in the feeling that they have power, often absolute, and they exercise it, sometimes with violence of different kinds, while their six-year term passes between days that seem like years and years that seem like minutes. And in the end, the break comes: they lose track of reality and reach a point of no return that, with rare exceptions, marks them for the rest of their lives.
Most of them cannot resolve the contradiction between being the Puritan who tried to save a country from sinners or the dictator who wanted to impose himself on others with fury and without limits because the presidential chair and the psychoanalyst’s couch are different things, although they are sometimes confused.
That is the finiteness of power to which political actors, consciously or subliminally, resist to the point of paroxysm. The day after, however, they will begin to experience the natural symptoms of disembarkation: deceit, abandonment, denunciations, settling of scores, revenge, accumulated grudges, or the worst of pathologies, the one that humiliates them the most: recognizing favors received that one day they must pay back. Robespierre,” recalls Gregorio Marañón, “the most tragic resentful man in history, had this phrase, capable of sending shivers down the spine of anyone who hears it: I felt from a very early age the painful slavery of gratitude“.
This has been the case since the beginning of time, and there are plenty of precedents, most of which are painful.
Secondly, this farewell ceremony is followed by the journey across the desert. No one who has been in power returns to what is called normal life. It is not that there is no life afterward; there is, but it is another, different, sometimes anodyne, sometimes tragic, but always different. What does what comes next depend on? On having had another life before, on the circumstances, on the sown wind, and on knowing how to decipher, as the ancients wanted, that one thing is time and another is life. Autocrats, those who spent their years in power looking at themselves and despising the rest of the world, will soon understand, as Sergio del Molino observes, that if “you have been bad, evil will eventually rot you”.
As a general rule, power wears out, although it is said that powerlessness wears out more. The ladder of ascent and descent is predictable. The high hours seduce, exude the aroma of triumph and arrogance, you seem indomitable, you are invincible. People flatter the ruler for how wonderful he is and find in him -or so they say- traits that until then were diffuse even for him -astuteness, charisma, stubbornness- because they sense that such flattery paves the way to the pleasures of the court, the privileges of influence, public office and private business.
On the other hand, that aura evaporates at full speed in the low hours. The people are moody and cruel, almost by instinct. The liturgy of coming and going is the same, but the actors differ. Loyalties fly, the light goes out, the applause ceases, and the curtain falls. There are no more messages to answer or invitations to attend to. The phones stop ringing. The cameras focus elsewhere. The microphones go into mute mode. There are no decisions to make, no agenda to fulfill, no instructions to give, no decrees to sign. All that remains is to tame fears, ruminate bitterness, enter decadence, and realize that indifference hurts more than oblivion.
Thirdly, any transition is dangerous because it has to do with the objective conditions in which the country is, with the relationship between those who arrive and those who leave, but above all, with the mental stability of those who leave and the attempt to make the last decisions or execute the missing vendettas, as has been revealed in recent weeks with the absurdity of the reform of the judiciary, among other things. In countries with mature institutions and reasonably civilized political leaderships, these transitions, never easy, can show the best of the characters but also, and sometimes more frequently, the worst.
Joseph S. Nye insisted that to analyze politicians better, more attention should be paid to their levels of self-control. This happened, for example, to Richard Nixon, who had a superior analytical and strategic head but never managed to control the personal insecurities that led to his downfall, a severe flaw that only became known over time. In contrast, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who possessed, as someone defined, “second-rate intelligence, but first-rate temperament,” made his a successful presidency.
But in systems with poor-quality political personnel, low-intensity citizenship, and a civic culture as defective as the Mexican one, temptations are multiple, risky, and ungovernable. Two precedents.
During the last five months of Luis Echeverría’s government (1970-76), amid a severe economic crisis, there was a coup against the Excelsior newspaper in July, a 40% devaluation of the peso in August, a flight of capital between 4 and 5 billion dollars, and, only ten days before the end of the six-year term, the expropriation of the Yaqui Valley lands belonging to hundreds of Sonoran peasants.
With López Portillo (1976-82), according to Isaac Katz’s account ( https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/opinion/Locuras-20240108-0001.html), the script of blunders was repeated. Instead of adjusting public finances after the fall in oil prices, the president tried to compensate by issuing 10 billion dollars of short-term foreign debt, which, together with other factors, led to the devaluation of February 1982 and other desperate measures such as an emergency wage increase (from 10% to 30%) in April, the suspension of payments, the mandatory conversion of accounts in dollars to pesos, i.e., foreign exchange control, and finally the expropriation of banks in September.
Of course, in one or another aspect, the situation is somewhat different today (thanks to the “neos” of previous governments), but the common denominator of these examples is the same: the loss of judgment, the personal catastrophe that the finiteness of power means for some and the perverse incentives it introduces for making (bad) decisions. That is why Enrique González Pedrero, apparently López Obrador’s preceptor at one time, used to say that in politics, there are no protective nets: “It is a random vicissitude that we started one day, without knowing how climbing on a tightrope.” What will happen now? Nobody knows.
The other challenge, equally very difficult, is not the game of names, the traditional Mexican “Cabinettitis,” but to explore which team is wanted and for what, and if it gathers capacity, preparation, or reputation, assuming that these qualities matter to the president-elect. This ideal profile, however, is not found anywhere in the world because in politics, one pact with the “devilish powers” of which Max Weber spoke, and in the period of López Obrador, these values lost their meaning. Furthermore, once some appointments are known, the excluded are invaded, even if they hide it, by envy, rage, and resentment, and they begin to draw the dagger for the right moment.
Those who have been in politics understand well that selecting people is the most challenging task because one never gets to know the human condition, the strangest thing there is, and different from the expertise of the entomologist. The leader would hope that those called would be competent, friendly, loyal party allies, well-liked by the departing party, and even fit Lyndon B. Johnson’s advice: “Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.” All at once. But this is rarely the case, and then you must decide which of these characteristics is the priority. That’s where the problems start because sometimes the competent ones are disloyal, the reputable ones are not friends, the inherited commitments are useless, the ambitious ones lie all the time, the forward-thinking ones are already thinking about 2030, and so on.
When appointed, they all believe in their inner selves, that they deserve it, and that the president simply recognizes their great virtues. On the other hand, when they are fired, the first thing they ask in bewilderment is why they are being fired, and then they start justifying themselves, bad-mouthing the government, and predicting that since they were fired, the crisis is imminent, which rarely happens.
Some presidents tend to ignore the golden rule of a very sharp old Mexican politician: the first thing to do is to govern the government. And this, too, is a tangled task. There will never be unanimity in the team; there are always philias, phobias, and old grievances, and in any case, the goal is to prevent it from becoming a civil war. Then, the role of the leader is to place himself above, to manage conflicts, to encourage competition among them, to raise those below and lower those above so that they do not believe they are irreplaceable, and to make them see that there is only one president, if indeed there is only one, which remains to be seen.
The subordinates, at least the judicious ones, trust that the president will know how to make complex decisions, that they will offer them support in critical moments, and that, even when it is an implicit part of the political contract between boss and subordinates, if they have to let them fall, they will offer them a protection net, even if it is a weak one. When this bond of reciprocal trust is broken, nothing good may be expected, governments fail, and history will be in charge of reminding them of this. The other is respect. In politics, respect is neither submission nor abjection: it is the conviction that there is a field marshal -one- who can lead in the most delicate context.
And the last rule is the one advised by Abraham Lincoln: if the president’s friends are in the administration for that reason alone but do not work out, the first to pay the price is the boss himself, and he will always regret it. The fundamental reason is that if they cannot hold on to office because of their effectiveness and competence but only because they are friends, because of a toxic loyalty or an unconfessable commitment, they sense that sooner or later they will be kicked out and will always be tempted to abuse their position and the power that comes with it.
Loyalty in politics is essential, as betrayal is also natural. Although it has a bad reputation, it exists, and it works. The problem comes when, as Javier Cercas says, one can only be loyal by betraying, whether a person, a past, a program, or a group, because then one loyalty conflicts with another. Following Cercas, one ethic goes against another. Those who have forgotten the scaffolding on which this complex dilemma is sustained did not have enough life to repent.
What path will President Sheinbaum follow? Time will tell.
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