Today's Mexico City Headlines: The papers look at Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton makes the front pages of three of the five major Mexico City dailies. Nothing big, just short stories or referrals to inside coverage.
    Excelsior’s photo-reefer head is typical: “Her aspirations are made official.” I’m not sure how “official” a short and slick social media video is, but it does mean she’s in and can’t back out. Besides, even John Podesta, one of her top advisers, used the word.
    La Jornada is alone in running an editorial previewing what a Hillary Clinton presidency might mean to Mexico and the world. The editorial struggles a bit to cite examples of foreign aggression during her stint as secretary of state. Her quick acceptance of the Honduran golpistas, was one, but serving as she did under Obama, there wasn't much encouragement to arrange ill-advised adventures.
    The paper makes its point, though — the woman is a hawk, or at least has been up to now. The Mexican left (and much of its right and center) is not prone to distinguish differences in the foreign policies of American presidents. They’re seen uniformly as unrepentant imperialists, all of a kind.
    So it will be interesting to see if some recognition emerges of what most U.S. Democrats have already concluded — that another Clinton presidency would be infinitely better for the world than anything the other party puts up.
    The papers had a few days to prepare, since the announcement had been announced in advance. So there was plenty of coverage in the inside pages today. Most of it was the familiar Hillary Clinton Story, updated but still worn out.
    We should get used to it. Most coverage her will be about personality, not policy. Nothing new about that.
    One more thing. “The candidates will be portrayed in the media — and seen by most people — as types, as stock characters, as soap opera role players.”
    That last sentence goes in quotes because it’s verbatim from a piece I wrote for the Mexico Herald in August of 2007.
    Clinton and Barack Obama were getting ready then to go at it in the upcoming primaries. But for most Mexican pundits and commentators, it was not a race between Clinton and Obama. It was a race between the woman and the black man. Not just any black man, mind you, but “the black man with the face of a child.” And not just any woman, but none other than "the beautiful, talented and astute Hillary Clinton."
    If you’re up for a few steps down memory lane, you can read it here.