Mexico's most popular president in decades is retiring. What will he leave behind?

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Many Mexicans will feel a deep sense of loss when folksy, charismatic, nationalistic President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves office on Sept. 30 — and that’s no surprise.

López Obrador himself has spent an inordinate amount of time talking about his own legacy — and his place in history — over his six-year term, something he brings up at almost every one of his marathonic daily 7 a.m. media briefings.

But what legacy will the rumpled, grinning López Obrador leave behind? It is perhaps the main question for a man who is obsessed with history, and one thing appears clear: he has changed the way politics is done in Mexico, perhaps forever.

Unlike decades of reserved and distant presidents, López Obrador has built a deep personal connection with many Mexicans. He has stripped the office of the thousands of presidential guards, limousines and walled compounds that once characterized it, saying “you can't have a rich government with poor people.”

“He is a politician who evokes familiarity, he reminds people of a father, an uncle, a grandfather," said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a political analyst at Mexico’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching. That's not a coincidence, either. López Obrador constantly praises the traditional family and says it has saved the country.

“He does feel nostalgia for some of the social structures of the 1970s in Mexico and nostalgia for the family,” said Pérez Ricart.

Will his legacy be like that of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created lasting institutions like Social Security and home mortgage programs that resulted in an enormous, stable middle class?

The Mexican leader stakes his movement on cash social-benefit programs, he likes to compare himself to Roosevelt and many Mexicans think of him with the same fondness that the more patrician FDR inspired in his day.

“I think he's going to be remembered as a president who started big changes, who thought about the people," said Armando López, 60, who works as a street cleaner.

Marina Fiesco, an office worker taking a break at a Mexico City park with her 11-year-old son, voiced similar feelings.

“I feel he does think about the people,” said Fiesco. “It's not about left or right, a president has to look out for the people.”

Part of that connection is that he talks more, and fields more questions, than probably any other leader in the world.

In his six years in office, he has held about 1,400 televised morning briefings that last an average of 2 1/2 hours each. He tells jokes, talks about his favorite foods, lashes out at critical journalists, makes fun of the opposition and sometimes plays his favorite music videos. Most briefings end with him saying, “Let's go get breakfast.”

He frequently says things that are not true. He claims Mexico doesn't produce fentanyl — the deadly synthetic opioid that kills about 70,000 Americans every year — even though his own officials have contradicted him. When homicides spiked this year — despite his claims to have achieved an 18% reduction — he simply ignored the figures.

Many Mexicans seem willing to tolerate the untruths, in part because López Obrador, 70, has mastered a key Mexican folk saying: “He who gets angry, loses.” He brushes real contradictions and problems off with a chuckle, a stony refusal to discuss them, or his stock phrase, “I have other data.”

He's probably the most skillful politician ever to rule Mexico and seems to enjoy some unstoppable motivating force: in all of his thousands of hours of talking, never once has he sat down, taken one sip of water or gone off to use the bathroom.

Influenced by Mexican presidents of the 20th century, López Obrador would have liked to make his mark with big infrastructure projects — he is obsessed with railroads and oil refineries — and big state-owned companies like the ones that dominated Mexico’s economy in the 1970s, his formative years.

But his building projects have been often ill-planned and will be subject to the withering trends of economic and energy transition. Unlike his heroes from the past, he hasn’t been able to nationalize any industry, and has only been able to fight a rear-guard action to defend the indebted, struggling state-owned oil and electric power companies he inherited.

Nor has he been able to make much of a mark in foreign policy, apart from a few rather pointless, unresolved disputes with Spain, the Vatican, Ecuador and Peru. In the face of U.S. pressure, he has used the 120,000-member national guard he created not to confront drug cartels, but to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border.

And his social programs — like the $150-per month payment to people over 65 — can fade, be defunded or eviscerated by inflation.

So could López Obrador turn out to be a figure like Argentina’s president in the 1940s and 50s, Juan Perón, who left behind an ideologically amorphous legacy that was fought over by disparate wings of his movement for decades?

“I think that what we are going to see is the ‘balkanization’ of Obrador-ism," said Pérez Ricart, “a dispute between the left and the right to own the term, a bit like what happened with Peronism in Argentina.”

Or he could go down in history as the person who, however briefly, revived the nearly century-old Mexican tradition of a “state party”, like the old PRI, where López Obrador began his political career. The PRI ruled Mexico for 70 years, before corruption, internal disputes and economic crises brought it down.

Some of López Obrador’s most devoted followers seem surprisingly willing to take the chance of another PRI.

“If after 70 years we’ve found we made a mistake, well, that’s life,” Fiesco said.

López Obrador may be part of a region-wide revival of old, populistic state-party models, both on the left and right.

For example, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele stresses that his administration — which won even greater margins of reelection than López Obrador's Morena — is a “hegemonic party, not a state party.”

That's almost exactly how Morena supporters describe their movement, but the instant any party starts to use the power of the government to keep itself in power, that distinction disappears.

Most people think it’s unlikely that Morena will last as long in power as the seven-decade run of the PRI.

“Times have changed, that's not possible anymore,” said Armando López, the street cleaner. “People will support him as long as they see something (in return). They're not going to follow him blindly.”

The Morena party was cobbled together by López Obrador out of old PRI members like himself and people from more leftist backgrounds. López Obrador is Morena's star, its guide, its moral authority. Once he's gone, the tensions within the party — already palpable — will likely grow stronger.

López Obrador is very aware of that, and from the start he has consciously built structures to guard his legacy, which he views as his own, not the party's. He has handed more economic and law-enforcement power over to the armed forces than any other Mexican president, because the army obeys him unquestioningly and he trusts them.

His longest-lasting legacy may be those structural changes: the militarization of law enforcement and large swaths of the economy, the elimination of all independent regulatory and oversight agencies, the frequent attacks on the media and a judicial overhaul that critics say will weaken democratic checks and balances.

Mexico's armed forces now run airports, trains, customs facilities — and even an airline.

“The truth is that there is one really important legacy, and that is the legacy of militarization,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University.

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FILE - A supporter of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holds a doll in his likeness as she listens to him give the annual Independence Day shout from the balcony of the National Palace at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stands before giving an address to the nation at the National Palace in Mexico City, April 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stands between Defense Secretary Luis Crescencio Sandoval, left, and Navy Secretary Vidal Francisco Soberon during the Independence Day military parade at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Sept. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, right, and Mexico City's Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum greet supporters after a rally to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his election in the Zocalo of Mexico City, July 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador meets with his security cabinet at the National Place in Mexico City, Aug. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)

FILE - A shopper looks at a keychain of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for sale outside the presidential palace in Mexico City, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - People arrive to the Zocalo for outgoing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's last State of the Nation address in Mexico City, Sept. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and first lady Beatriz Gutierrez Muller greet the crowd during an Independence Day military parade at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Sept. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and first lady Beatriz Gutierrez Muller wave during an event marking the Army Day at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Feb. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

FILE - A supporter of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sporting a tattoo of the president arrives for a march to show support for Lopez Obrador's administration in Mexico City, Nov. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - Newly elected President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holds a chieftain's staff during an Indigenous ceremony at the Zocalo in Mexico City, Dec. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

FILE - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pauses during his daily, morning press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, March 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

FILE - Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador greets supporters as he kicks off a nationwide tour after his election in Mazatlan, Mexico, Sept. 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Still 2 1/2 months shy of his 21st birthday and the legal drinking age, Jackson Holliday was given his own brand of bubbly in the jubilant Baltimore Orioles clubhouse: a bottle labeled “Bird Bath Water" left in a bucket with his No. 7 jersey and a sign: “BABY'S FIRST CLINCHMAS 2024.”

“It's a little bit more enjoyable for me,” the rookie said, clutching the non-alcoholic postprandial in Tuesday night's celebration at Yankee Stadium while teammates chugged from the tubes of the Orioles Hydration Station. "I was hoping that I could get in on the fun."

Baltimore is headed to the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time since the 1990s, clinching no worse than a wild-card berth.

After left fielder Colton Cowser gloved Alex Verdugo's flyout to seal a 5-3 win over the New York Yankees that brought Baltimore to the verge of the postseason, the Orioles filed into a visiting clubhouse draped with protective plastic curtains. Nine minutes later, while manager Brandon Hyde was answering postgame questions from media, Carlos Correa took a called third strike that finished Minnesota's 4-1 loss to Miami, assuring the Orioles another trip to the postseason.

“Last year winning the American League East was just such an achievement for us and the expectations were much lower,” general manager Mike Elias said. “We came into this year with higher expectations. We made a lot of moves that kind of pushed some chips in for this year and then we just didn’t have the fortune that we would have hoped for. I think today is a sense of relief.”

Coming off their first division title since 2014, the Orioles started 23-11 and were 55-31 before play on July 3 but have gone 32-39 since, slowed by a series of injuries. The Orioles had topped the division alone for 62 days and opened as much as a three-game lead.

Baltimore’s pitching staff lost Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells to elbow injuries that led to operations. Grayson Rodriguez hasn’t pitched since July 31 because of a lat problem.

“Not a lot has gone right in the last few months," Hyde said. "We're right in every game and things just haven't worked out in our favor. A ton of bad luck, too.”

Dean Kremer, who allowed one run and three hits over five innings for the win, started last year's game against Tampa Bay that assured the Orioles their first playoff berth since 2016. Eleven days later, he got the victory in the AL East clincher, which gave the Orioles 100 wins for the first time since 1980. He then lost the final game of the Division Series as Texas completed a three-game sweep en route to the Rangers' first World Series title.

“This is going to be kind of like a fresh start. We don’t have to grind now,” Kremer said.

As this year's postseason approaches, the Orioles are getting healthier. All-Star infielder Jordan Westburg came back from a broken hand on Sunday, the same day third baseman Ramón Urías returned from a sprained right ankle. First baseman Ryan Mountcastle was activated Tuesday after missing a month because of a sprained left wrist.

Baltimore has formidable power — the Orioles' 228 home runs are second only to the Yankees' 230.

“We know the type of group that we have,” said All-Star right fielder Anthony Santander, whose sixth-inning drive off the right-field foul pole gave him career highs of 44 homers and 100 RBIs.

Baltimore was knocked out in the AL Championship Series in 1996 and ’97. The Orioles (87-70) have only a remote chance of overtaking the Yankees (92-65) for the AL East title — they need to go 5-0 and the Yankees 0-5. But they hold a four-game lead for the top wild card, which would mean playing next week's best-of-three Wild Card Series at Camden Yards.

“I’m hopeful that our luck kind of evens out in the playoffs,” Elias said, "because last year we had the reverse."

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Baltimore Orioles' players celebrate after clinching a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' players celebrate after clinching a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' players drink from the hydration station after clinching a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' Gunnar Henderson celebrates after the team clinched a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' players celebrate after clinching a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' players celebrate after clinching a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' Jackson Holliday holds a bottle of a nonalcoholic beverage during post-game celebrations after the team clinched a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. Holliday is the only member of the Orioles not of legal drinking age. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Baltimore Orioles' Jackson Holliday is doused with beer as teammates celebrate after clinching a playoff berth by defeating the New York Yankees in baseball game, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)