Mexico Let Us Now Await the Hidden One

It is the time-honored season of the tapado, the hidden one, when Mexico's ruling party mysteriously selects a candidate for the next presidential election. There will be no political scrapping, no embarrassing public exchanges. Instead, as tradition dictates, "precandidates" have quietly come to the fore. When the moment is right, probably within the next six months, President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado will anoint one of the hopefuls -- the tapado -- to be the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. That man almost certainly will be the next President. Since the party's founding in 1929, no P.R.I. candidate has...