Polls: First lady's next title likely to be Argentina president

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — All this first lady talk is getting a bit tiresome for Argentina's first lady.

"I didn't get into politics because I'm the wife of the president," Sen. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner told the Spanish daily El País, with apparent exasperation.

Polls and analysts point to Fernandez as the prohibitive favorite to succeed her husband in Argentina's Oct. 28 presidential election.

Fernandez was officially anointed the candidate of the ruling Victory Front in July after months of conjecture about whether President Néstor Kirchner would step down. Kirchner thus became the rare president, in Latin America and almost anyplace else, who passed on an almost-certain re-election.

The Kirchners draw support for having guided Argentina through four years of robust growth and stability, after the nation's economic meltdown of 2001-02. A fragmented opposition has contributed to a sense that a Fernandez victory is inevitable, despite recent corruption scandals, an energy crisis and electoral setbacks to the ruling party.

The Kirchner power team dominates here in way that the Clintons, the couple they're often compared to, could never match in the United States. The administration has overwhelmed congressional opposition, bullied the media and expanded influence over the courts.

"There is no equivalent of the Republican Party to oppose the Kirchners," said Sergio Berenzstein, a political analyst.

Critics say the Kirchners share an autocratic streak and deep mistrust of the press. Fernandez, 54, is inevitably described as hot-tempered and controlling, much like her irascible husband, who was elected president in 2003.

The first lady would become Argentina's first female elected president, and South America's second sitting female president, joining Chile's Michelle Bachelet.

Fernandez has long been a political force, a departure from the image of Latin American first ladies who hold charity events and stand by their men. She extols the still-revered former first lady Eva Perón, with her "thrusting fist in front of microphone."

But parallels are drawn less often to the working-class icon Evita than to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Like Clinton, Fernandez met her future husband while both were law students. And, like the Clintons, the Kirchners first established a power base in the husband's home region, in this case the southern province of Santa Cruz, in remote Patagonia, where Kirchner was governor.

But Fernandez's passage from the Senate to the Pink House, the rose-colored Argentine presidential residence, should be less taxing than Sen. Clinton's quest.

Whereas Clinton must endure a bruising primary, Fernandez is gliding in as the standard-bearer of the governing Perónist movement, now dominated by the Kirchners. As a first lady, Fernandez has served as a glamorous ambassador-at-large, heading official delegations in recent months to Geneva, Paris, Mexico City and Madrid, posing with world leaders. Even critics acknowledge her fluid, extemporaneous speaking style, a stark contrast to her husband's wooden oratory.

Fernandez's interest in foreign affairs has sparked some hope for a thaw in U.S.-Argentine relations, which are at a low point. Kirchner has hardly concealed his distaste for international diplomacy, except for his kinship with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

"There's a sense that the U.S. could have a little more productive relationship with Cristina than with her husband," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

Her prospective transformation to señora presidenta has focused attention on the "Cristina look."

Rumors of Botox and other treatments have swirled, with alleged before-and-after photographs. Experts analyze her wardrobe, cosmetics, hair color, skirt lengths, high heels and everything else.

Both Kirchners are leftist populists, their political formation a product of the turbulent 1970s. The couple lay low in Patagonia during Argentina's 1976-83 military rule.

Fernandez was elected to the Senate in the 1990s while her husband was virtually unknown in Buenos Aires. She soon became a ubiquitous rebel, launching diatribes against then-President Carlos Menem, a right-wing Perónist.

But her husband's provincial political base provided Fernandez with crucial initial support. His presidency has cleared the way for her to succeed him.

"Without the backing of her husband," said Berenzstein, the political analyst, "Cristina would never have risen as she did."

Andres D'Alessandro of the Los Angeles Times' Buenos Aires bureau contributed to this report.