Why is this man smiling?

And why should we smile back?

This may shock you, but he’s happily, shamelessly taking credit for the U.S. House and Senate votes on immigration this week. He didn’t have all that much to do with it, except a little and except that it was none of his business.

Nevermind.

We gotta smile back.

Fox’s political party is reaping big from these immigration reform bills being hashed out in Washington. And Mexican elections are around the corner. With World Cup headed at us like a freight train in June, something that will stop all political activity and war throughout the world for a few weeks, good feelings about Fox’s “role” in passage of these immigration bills is a major last thing Mexican voters will remember as they head for the polls July 2.

Go on, let him take credit.

Vicente Fox’s center-right, free-market PAN party, and its candidate, Felipe Calderon, is likely to reap big.

This is good news for everyone, including us in the U.S.

The PAN party is running on a platform of job creation, and of opening Mexico’s closed energy sector to put Hugo Chavez out of business and provide more oil for us since the clowns in U.S. Congress still don’t get it about offshore drilling.

Mexico’s gains in transparency, in better market regulation, in sound stable currency, in fiscal discipline and in a rising stock market – and believe it or not, job creation – will continue apace and not be rolled back by an inward-looking Hugo-Chavez-style populist in Mexico.

The odds of the good guys winning in Mexico have just got better, because of the Congressional immigration bills. No matter what we think of the immigration bills – and there will be a lot of mudslinging here before it’s over – the effect of this news south of our border is very good indeed.

Everybody can find something to smile with Vicente Fox about in that!

Vicente you hound dog!

Enjoy the story here.