Mexico

More than any particular approach to drugs, trade, or immigration, Mexicans are looking to see which candidate is most likely to fix the U.S. economy -- when it booms, so does Mexico's. The problem is that no one knows who that might be.

In recent years, U.S.-Mexico security cooperation has been strikingly effective, in part because of close individual relationships between officials on both sides of the border. But each of the candidates in Mexico’s presidential election has promised to shift the country’s focus from stopping the drug trade to fighting crime, which will not sit well with Washington.

For decades, the PRI maintained control in Mexico by buying votes, co-opting the opposition, and wielding a repressive hand. Now the party could retake the presidency, but whether the PRI will return to its bad old ways is less important than the fact that Mexico's democratic institutions will hem in whoever is elected.

There are now three candidates for Mexico's July 1 presidential election, but it is Josefina Vázquez Mota’s place on the ticket that has the potential to upend the future of the country's politics. Unlike her two challengers, who are linked to the old guard and old boys' network, as a woman Vázquez Mota can claim to be the mantle of change, even against her own party.