Mexico's president Felipe Calderon speaks during a press conference at the Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, March 5, 2007.
Unlike a lot of the pugnacious leaders Latin America is known for, Felipe Calderón doesn't look the part of the tough guy. The new President of Mexico is short and bespectacled, an owlish lawyer and economist who evokes technocrats like Michael Dukakis. When he visited Mexican troops battling drug gangs in western Michoacán state earlier this year, Calderón donned an olive green army jacket and a five-star general's cap and was later photographed in a military Hummer. That incongruous image conjured unflattering comparisons to the tank ride that doomed Dukakis' U.S. presidential hopes in 1988. But Calderón has not only weathered the...
