P.R.I.

It appears this morning that Enrique Peña Nieto has been elected President of Mexico. 

This has accomplished two things:

• It brings the PRI, the party that ran Mexico for most of my life, back into power after a 12 year absence.
• It gives Mexico the best looking first lady in the hemisphere – probably best on the planet.

She is model, actress, and soap opera star Angelica Rivera, who married  Peña Nieto in 2010.  He was a widower, and she was divorced. Each had three children from their previous marriages, and the President-elect, who is known as something of a playboy, is said to have at least one other son out there somewhere.

The PRI for 71 years ruled as a single party known for coercion and corruption, but also for building Mexico's institutions and social services. It was often accused of stealing elections, most infamously the 1988 presidential vote. But PRI governments were also known for keeping a lid on organized crime, whose battles with government and each other under the regime of current President Felipe Calderon have taken more than 50,000 lives and traumatized the country.

Peña Nieto said in a news conference that he can ease the waves of violence in Mexican Drug War by redirecting the focus of the military approach carried out by Mexico's current president.  Instead of focusing primarily on taking down the heads of the criminal organizations and the most-wanted drug lords of the cartels, he proposes to use government resources to put down homicides, kidnappings, and extortions—crimes that do the most damage to the Mexican people—by flooding troops and police into places with the highest rates of violent crimes.

Peña Nieto has said that his proposal does not mean that the government will not tackle other crimes nor prevent drug trafficking, but rather noted that arresting drug bosses will no longer be the focus of his administration. Opponents of Peña Nieto have said that the PRI's return will mean the going back to the "old PRI model" of making deals with the cartels.

Peña Nieto's strategy would align with a new strain of thinking for the general public, which calls for law enforcement in both the United States and Mexico to make violence reduction their overwhelming focus in the War on Drugs

Many predict he will build on Calderon's economic and security strategies but, working with a more friendly congress, may have more success. The main test of a new PRI will be how it handles corruption.