Mexico Trucker Online

Before Mexicans can move forward from the tightest presidential race in the history of the republic, it is likely one man will have to give the speech of his political life.

His identity will emerge when the country’s Federal Electoral Institute declares a winner between Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party.

But after a polarizing campaign, the words most needed to be heard by a fragile democracy shouldn’t come from the lips of a victor who received less than half the ballots cast.

Instead, they must come — if they come at all — from the heart and mind of the disappointed loser.

By accepting or rejecting the results, Calderón or López Obrador will be telling his dejected supporters — in either case more than a third of the people who cast ballots — how to act in the coming weeks and months.

A protracted fight will be the worst scenario for a developing nation that has yet to prove it has the patience for long-term solutions to urgent needs like widespread poverty and a profoundly broken system of distributing wealth.

That’s why Mexico could use an Al Gore moment. Not the wooden former vice president of the United States who talked his way out of the White House in 2000 by boring the American electorate.

What Mexico needs is the defeated Gore. The one who, in the deep despair of losing in razor-thin fashion to George W. Bush, summoned the statesmanship to concede after the U.S. Supreme Court ended his recount fight.

“While we yet hold — and do not yield — our opposing beliefs, there is a higher duty than the one we owe to political party,” Gore said then. “This is America, and we put country before party. We will stand together behind our new president.”

In many ways, Mexico’s current dilemma was born of the same conditions as Gore vs. Bush.

Like their American counterparts, Calderón and López Obrador are very different politicians who unmasked deep divisions within their country’s electorate.

Calderón, the conservative who favors free markets, privatization and a cozy relationship with the United States, would signal a continuation of the often frustrated, but warranted, agenda of structural reforms favored by outgoing President Vicente Fox.

López Obrador, the left-leaning populist who wants to focus on the poor and put Mexicans to work with massive public works projects, would represent a brand of nationalism that worries Washington but appeals to his disenchanted countrymen.

Unfortunately, after a hard-fought presidential election like the 2000 American version, it is unclear if either man simply can walk away.

Gore took 36 days to wage his unsuccessful court battle. And it’s hard to imagine that Calderón or López Obrador won’t pursue every avenue available under the law, said Francisco Durand, a Latin America specialist at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Last month’s Peruvian presidential election offers a cautionary tale of how soured relationships can linger, he said.

Peruvian President-elect Alan Garcia and his foe, retired Lt. Col. Ollanta Humala, haven’t spoken, much less reconciled in public, since the June 4 election.

No offense to Peru, but Mexico deserves a Gore moment.