The unspeakable and the inexplicable

SOME leaders like their governments to be teams of rivals, or big tents or nests of brilliant specialists. Those are not the preferences of Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president since 2012. He rules through a tight coterie of loyal aides, many of whom worked with him in his previous job as governor of the state of Mexico (which surrounds Mexico City). Whatever their other qualities, they have often seemed impervious both to the imperatives of democratic politics and to the ways of the wider world.

It must have looked like a brainwave to someone in Mr Peña’s inner circle to invite the candidates in the American presidential election to drop by. It would put Mr Peña on the world’s front pages as a statesman able to do business even with Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, who has made Mexico-bashing the leitmotif of his campaign.