Monthly Archives: February 2012

Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French thinker and politician, coined the idea that certain countries would be exceptional, that is, qualitatively distinct from the others. Great myths have been constructed around this appreciation. What makes a society distinctive is the nature of its population, its history and culture, and its way of being. In this […]

On occasion we Mexicans don’t realize how uncommonly lucky we’ve been. Fraught with problems of our immediate milieu and thoroughgoing pessimists, we often do not recognize that the political and economic changes of the recent decades have been exceptionally seamless. When one observes and analyzes the survival logic of regimes such as those of Cuba, […]

The future is not something that comes about on its own. Rather, it is the product of decisions that are made, or not made, day to day. The entirety of the decisions made by a government, as well as the accumulation of actions and decisions undertaken by each and every member of a society, shape […]

The key to success for a political strategist is to appear innocent and to have a reputation for honesty and benevolence. He or she who attempts to appear Machiavellian simply is not. At least this is what Machiavelli said. On voting last Sunday, the PANists would not have disappointed him. The internal contest of PAN, […]