Public Approves of Down-Home Style

MEXICO CITY —  Newly inaugurated President Vicente Fox, decked out in a tailored gray suit and the red, white and green presidential sash, was just beginning a formal address before 10,000 supporters and dignitaries Friday when something went wrong.

He stopped.

He squinted at the TelePrompTer.

He gave up.

“I’m reading this, eh?” he confessed to the crowd. “Don’t think I’m that brilliant.”

It was classic Vicente Fox. But this was something brand new in a Mexican president, and the crowd at the National Auditorium roared with appreciation.

For decades, Mexican presidents were regarded as virtual gods. They enjoyed near-total power, and few dared to criticize them. In dealing with the public, they were stiffer than Al Gore with arthritis.

During the seven decades in which the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, held the presidency, a standard inauguration tradition was the “hand-kissing” ceremony, in which thousands of politicians, business leaders and others lined up to unctuously pay homage to the new leader.

The near-imperial presidency has declined in recent years. But Fox’s inauguration Friday appeared to completely bury it, or at least its trappings.

Unlike most Mexican presidents who spent much of their lives in the capital, Fox comes from the provinces, having grown up on a farm in central Guanajuato state. He revels in his country roots, using colorful language, wearing cowboy boots and frequently returning to his ranch to ride horses.

In his uphill campaign to unseat the PRI, he consistently adopted casual language and dress to endear himself to voters and differentiate himself from the country’s longtime political clan.

Fox’s style set him apart immediately as he took office Friday. He began his day in bluejeans and boots, heading to Mexico City’s renowned Basilica of Guadalupe to pray to the nation’s most revered Roman Catholic religious figure.

From there, it was on to a breakfast with street children in the impoverished neighborhood of Tepito. Fox, still in jeans, ate tamales with a plastic spoon as he chatted with young boys wearing sweatshirts, earrings and backward baseball caps.

The breakfast was as powerful a symbol of change as Jimmy Carter’s walk through Washington’s streets after his inauguration in 1977.

Fox, of course, was trying to send a political message. He is a member of the center-right National Action Party, which critics charge doesn’t care about the poor.

Still, local residents and the Mexican media covering the event ate it up. No one addressed Fox as “Sir Citizen President,” the term often used for the Mexican leader; he was simply “Vicente.”

“He’s playing to the masses in a very populistic way, in terms of style,” said Federico Estevez, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “It has to do with breaking down that horrible legacy of complete deference to authority we’ve always known in Mexico.”

Later, as Fox gave his inaugural address in Congress, it was clear that his easygoing manner and language could be a useful tool. PRI legislators hooted and heckled throughout the speech.

But Fox wasn’t upset. Instead, he responded to their insults, at one point declaring: “I’m getting there. I’m getting there. Take it easy!”

The spectators roared. The lawmakers were disarmed.