Peter Krupa

Recently, I thought I had spotted the worst campaign ad ever. Rarely am I proven so wrong so quickly:

A pregnant gospel choir teams up with a mentally handicapped piano player and a man dressed as a baby to inform us in song that “the least bad is the best,” and now my head has exploded.

UPDATE: Fishman deleted this video from his campaign’s YouTube account after an uncomfortable interview about it with La Nación. Nice try, bub. The Internet doesn’t allow take-backs.

Ask any taxi driver in Latin America who he’s going to vote for and he’ll probably say, “El menos malo.” The least bad one. The lesser of two evils. Lots of people say this in Costa Rica as well. That doesn’t mean you should put it in a campaign advertisement.

Luis Fishman was a late-in-the-game replacement for his party’s nomination for the presidential elections. The prior nominee had to be replaced when he was sentenced to prison for taking bribes the last time he was president, meaning that, at least in this context, Fishman is indeed el menos malo.

Fishman is polling in the low single digits for the February voting, and somehow I don’t see ads like this whipping the electorate up into a frenzy.

It’s that time of year again, the time when New York Times columnists write cloying, un-fact-checked columns repeating something some tour guide told them on their Costa Rican vacation. Last year it was Thomas Friedman (“(No) Drill Baby Drill,” yeah right) this year it’s Nicholas Kristoff, of all people.

There’s something about Costa Rica that makes otherwise intelligent, skeptical people start grinning and nodding like idiots, chanting “Pura Vida” like it actually means something. All of them parrot what are essentially Costa Rica talking points about the environment, peace, social justice, solidarity, etc.

It is, of course, a fantasy, but one that Americans absolutely adore. This is what vacations – and to a lesser extent parachute journalism as practiced by columnists – is all about. Find what you expect, and don’t poke it too hard.

A little video I shot about life in Costa Rica.