Interview With a President

In five months I went from tying second graders' shoes to interviewing the former president of the world's 13th largest economy.

I met Vicente Fox, Mexico's president from 2000 to 2006, in a dreary board room overlooking the Missouri River. We sat down face to face -- he a washed-up world leader trying to maintain his relevance, and me, a nervous kid itching in a cut-rate Men's Wearhouse suit. On our left, we could see the "Mighty Mo'," filtered through a fog that never seemed to disappear the whole time I was in Omaha.

I had arrived in Omaha the previous night, my mind permanently swamped with the daunting task of interviewing a figure I perceived as nearly superhuman. What questions should I ask? How should I ask them? How in the mere fifteen minutes allotted to me could I establish the rapport and the confidence necessary to probe him on more difficult questions? And, perhaps most importantly, would we converse in English or Spanish?

With the help of my colleagues on the "editorial staff" I had come up with an outline of five general topics: the ex-president’s new presidential library and think tank "Centro Fox", his impressions on free-trade and the President-elect’s campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA, the outlook for cooperation between Mexico and the US under the new Obama Administration, his thoughts on crime and security in Mexico, and an assessment of the internal political situation south of the border.

To research these topics, I spent hours poring over interviews Fox had given in recent days, particularly a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer, and a roundtable discussion on NPR the day following the US election. I was at first taken aback by Wolf Blitzer's lack of patience with Fox, asking him a question and then moments later cutting him off mid sentence. I later learned that the "big-shot interview," as one fellow journalist called it, is as much about negotiating the conversation as it is about asking the right questions.

I spent the entire day on Tuesday in preparation, re-reading my notes, searching Google News for statements Fox had made to the Mexican media. My interview was scheduled for 3 pm and around 2:15 I hopped on the valet shuttle to the site indicated by my press contact, Gallup University, which is not a university at all, but the headquarters of the Gallup Organization, which in addition to polling, manages a worldwide business consultancy.

It was here that Fox had come to meet Gallup's CEO, I later learned, to confirm a deal between Gallup and the Centro Fox to hold joint forums on leadership development in Mexico, and to make Gallup polling data available to Fox’s research center. I stated my purpose at the front desk and was ushered to a chair alongside a rotund woman, who told me she was a reporter for the Associated Press.

“How do you like the AP?” I asked. For a reporter, she was unexpectedly stolid. “It’s alright,” she said, tight-lipped. I figured this was a good opportunity to improve my small talk skills in anticipation of the big enchilada.

“Do you work all the time? Is it a round-the-clock job?” When I'm around reporters I always feel like they know something about this job that I don't, and I vacillate between trying to prove I know what I'm doing and, conversely, asking a ton of questions about the job I'm supposed to know how to do. She opened up a little but, telling me about her beat—immigration and refugee communities in Omaha—and eventually the press person came to herd us into another waiting area.

Minutes later, Fox, trailed by is wife, handlers, and bodyguards (who, oddly, wore suit jackets on top of turtlenecks), strutted into the boardroom where he would receive reporters. The handlers ushered the AP woman in, and I learned that I was to be Fox's third and final interview before he was off to speak at a public engagement in Omaha’s Orpheum Theater. He was already running late and one of the handlers told me he'd have to leave the building at 3:25, which seemed to pretty much reduce my time to nil. But the aide reassured me I would get my fifteen minutes, echoing Andy Warhol's now famous pop culture prediction.

Before I knew it they came for me, and rushed me into the boardroom to an immediate confrontation with Fox, a large, confident cowboy with a mustache leaping off the sides of his narrow face. To put it plainly, I was nervous as hell.

I greeted him with a stuttering "Buenos dias," to which he immediately corrected me. "Buenas tardes," he said. "It’s the afternoon." Surely judging my Spanish to be inferior, he spoke to me from then on in lilted English reminiscent of Speedy Gonzalez.

I asked him first about what he was doing in Nebraska and his Centro Fox, as my superiors had wisely suggested. He warmed to this, but the now the problem was getting him to shut up before he wasted all of the time. As he rambled on about the Centro Fox and its goals I got increasingly worried that he was hijacking the entire piñata.

Suddenly I realized what I had to do. I summoned Wolf Blitzer. In the most diplomatic way I could, I cut him off—or tried to at least. He continued talking, but wrapped up his sentence, sensing my urgency to get on with it. From that moment on, I tried to control the conversation better, setting the ground rules for every topic by saying "You've said..." (e.g., you've called President Calderon's energy reform 'pyrrhic and small').

As much as I tried to dig deeper, I struggled to maintain depth considering the breadth of topics I had established for conversation. More often than not, by the time I felt comfortable with the topic and ready to ask a tougher, more probing question, my watch -- or a glare across the room from one of Fox's handlers -- told me it was time to move on.

Finally, one of his aides told me my time was up. Not wanting to miss a good photo op, I took advantage of the break in the conversation to snap a photo of Vicente and me. Then I followed him down the hall with my voice recorder in hand, trying to get a few final quotes on Mexico's energy reform (a Gallup aide later said I looked like a "young Tom Friedman").

And that was it: "adiós." My first big shot interview concluded in less than 15 minutes. On the whole, I thought it could have gone better, but it definitely taught me some lessons for next time. In any case, the article ultimately came out well, and both my bosses seemed happy with the end result.

Gracias, Señor Presidente.