A Tale of Two Ranches

It'll be sad, really, watching Jorge and Vicente go through the motions today. Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox will "summit" at the Crawford ranch, talk about the glories of NAFTA and pledge to toughen border security. They'll even have Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin around to ease the awkwardness and help them avoid lingering on what might have been between two amigos.

Four years ago, it was a different ranch, a different era. Bush hadn't been in office even a month before he rushed down to Fox's place in Guanajuato. The two newly elected ranch-owning conservatives hit it off. Fox gave Bush a pair of boots and introduced him to his mother. Bush, the former border governor, agreed it was a "new day" in Mexican-American relations, and the two leaders kicked off ambitious negotiations aimed at overhauling U.S. immigration policy.

But even back then, in Guanajuato, there was a foreshadowing of things to come, of an American president's inability to focus on his old neighborhood. On the day of Bush's visit, U.S. warplanes struck Iraqi radar installations. Mexico couldn't even have the day to itself.

Too bad, because the opportunity for a new Mexico-U.S. partnership was real. Having vanquished the long-ruling Party of the Institutional Revolution in the 2000 election, Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, desired change. Our "distant neighbor," to recall the title of Alan Riding's 1985 book, suddenly wanted to be our best friend.

Fast-forward four years, and the two countries have little to show for that initial euphoria. There is no immigration accord, no partnership to promote democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere, no comprehensive energy deal to pierce Mexico's self-defeating barriers to foreign investment and lessen American reliance on Mideast oil. Bush, in the end, never even deigned to pay a state visit to Mexico City. He was too busy, if not in a snit over Mexico's refusal to back the war in Iraq in the U.N. Security Council.

So here we are, talking only about such absurdities as whether Al Qaeda could exploit the border's porousness. There is something about that 2,000-mile, often illusory line that makes politicians say the loopiest things. GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for instance, recently chastened Mexico City for "turning a blind eye" to the fact that its citizens cross illegally into the United States. As if Washington could do anything if Americans decided to leave en masse, without proper papers, for Canada. For his part, Fox is out of line when he decries U.S. efforts to erect walls and make it harder for people to cross -- that is Washington's prerogative.