Virtue-al campaign?

For a guy that’s been out of the limelight (at least in the mainstream media) for the last couple of years, Andres Manuel López Obradór certainly can draw a crowd.  The photo (by Carlos Ramos Mamahua) in yesterday’s Jornada — one of the only “mainstream” media outlets to take AMLO seriously —  was from an article on the former candidate (and “presidente legitimo”)’s launch of a new campaign for the Presidency in 2012...

As much moral crusade as political theater, Lopez Obradór said he is not seeking the Presidency for personal gain but “to pull the country out of backwardness and give future generations the  right to hope and to live in a better society.”

In addition to specific constitutional reforms (including an elected Supreme Court), Lopez Obradór is basing his campaign on calls for :

… democratizing the media, tax optimization, support for domestic industry and strengthening  social programs.   López Obrador stressed the importance of transforming the country through moral ideals, with principles grounded not in the accumulation of material wealth, but in stewardship and a sense of community.

He … said he was convinced that not sufficient to improve living conditions and working conditions, but is also  “essential to create a new thinking to strengthen cultural, moral and spiritual values” , the current crisis created not so much by a lack of jobs, but because “greed has become a virtue, and the scramble for money has led a belief that that one should triumph at any cost, without regard to moral or ethical scruples.”

I’m not sure how that will be reduced to a bumper sticker, and I’m not sure where, anywhere on the planet, you’d find a professional political operatives who know anything about virtue — ok, maybe one, but I don’t think she works in Mexico.