Juan Camilo Mouriño who died in yesterdays tragic air crash in Mexico City, was if not his best, then one of the best friends of President Felipe Calderón.  Below is a tribute to Mouriño written by someone who was more accustomed to disagreeing with him than agreeing with him.  I always admire people who can like and respect and admire people of vastly different opinions.  In this case, it seems that those differences were not held so tightly that they made friendship impossible.  That's how we get somewhere, by talking across our differences with respect.  I think this is what Obama is about.

I met Juan Camilo Mouriño during the preparations for the first presidential debate of the 2006 election.  I was a negotiator for the Partido Socialdemócrata and he was Felipe Calderón's campaign coordinator.

He seemed to me that he he reflected clearly what the PAN campaign wanted to convey:  youth, enthusiasm, conviction, promise.

In the process of preparing for the debate, he always showed care and respect regarding the differences we had over a great number of subjects.  He from the right and I from the left had productive disagreements.
Sometime later, I ran into him occasionally when he was at los Pinos (the Mexican equivalent of our White House).  He was always astute, with a particular attention to what people said and how they said it, with an enviable memory and the daily discipline to defend his friend and boss, the President of the Republic.

My differences with Juan Camilo were certainly sufficient for the short time we knew each other, however he always completely respected my right to have an opinion different from his and he always recognized how important it was to have diversity and plurality.

Today, tragically, the country has lost a man who was a fundamental part of the plans of those who government.  From this tragedy we will jointly have to come up with a way of this painful and difficult situation

These are the times when we should leave behind our party differences, discord, dogmatism, and personal interests and put our country first.  It is time to get to the bottom of this accident.  One shouldn't permit govenment speculation, but also it is necessary to know the truth.

I feel terribly sad for his family and friends, and also for the twelve people who lost their lives in this accident.

Luciano Pascoe, the author of the above, is a sociologist who writes, in addition to his blog, Políticas, Campañas e ideas,  for the newspaper La Cronica de Hoy.  He also appears on Mexican television as a commentator.  He is a member of the newish political party Socialdemocrata, a center-left organization with a tendancy towards free market economics and liberal social policy and values.