No mas Mr. Underdog

Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico — ANDRES MANUEL Lopez Obrador, the leading contender to win Mexico's presidential election on July 2, just wants to run out the clock. "Easter is here, so people will go on vacation. Then the World Cup comes in June, and people will have other things on their minds," he recently told a crowd in his seductively raspy voice in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas.

And why not? Lopez Obrador has remained ahead in the polls ever since Mexico's two other major parties -- the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and the National Action Party, or PAN -- unsuccessfully tried barring him from the race last spring with an impeachment process for disregarding court orders as mayor of Mexico City.

But playing the part of the front-runner doesn't suit this leftist, straight-talking, self-professed rabble-rouser from the state of Tabasco, the politico who famously moved his family to live among Indians when he held a government job dealing with indigenous affairs, and then perfected the art of the mass demonstration when he lost a race for governor of his home state.

Lopez Obrador, who is running as the candidate of the Party of Democratic Revolution, or PRD, thrives as an underdog, and he relishes the notion of taking on an establishment intent on persecuting him.

"I am still here, fighting for you, despite all the calumnies and lies of our opponents," Lopez Obrador told the approving crowd here. He went on to say that he was the victim of a smear campaign unleashed by "powerful interests" who rely on techniques perfected by Adolf Hitler and his chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels.

That's exactly the kind of fanciful hyperbole that is most worrisome about the prospect of a Lopez Obrador presidency.

To the extent that they are paying any attention to the compelling three-way race taking shape in Mexico, Washington and Wall Street just want to know whether Lopez Obrador as president would take after Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (bad leftie intent on crazy economic policies and anti-Yankee rhetoric) or Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (good leftie who acted responsibly on all fronts once in office).

This is an overly simplistic template, of course, though Lopez Obrador seems to bristle at the comparisons to Chavez, telling the assembled faithful here that he has never even gotten a phone call from the Venezuelan leader.