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Drug thugs dumped 49 bloodied and dismembered corpses on a northernMexican highway yesterday May 13. We journalists are finding littlenew to say, few fresh insights to offer, about these all toofrequent narco-massacres in Mexico and the 50,000 people murderedso far in the country's endless drug war. That'stroubling, because one of the worst things that could happen isthat the world becomes inured to the ghastly violence. But at thispoint, what worries us more is that the leading candidates inMexico s July 1 presidential election really don t seem to haveanything new to say about this crisis either. Critics of Mexican President Felipe Calder n, whose six-year-longmilitary campaign against the drug cartels has in many waysexacerbated the violence, often call the war Calderon s Iraq. But when former U.S. President George W. Bush left office in 2009,the real Iraq War was still his successor s problem and thesame will be true of whomever follows Calderon. (He isconstitutionally limited to one six-year term.) So far, the threetop politicos vying to replace Calder n have offered little morethan generalities, or remedies Calder n has already put forward,about how to end a conflict that is killing its share of innocentsas well as monstrous traffickers. (Officials don t dismiss thepossibility that some if not all of the 49 newest mutilated victimsweren t narcos but civilians like migrant workers who couldn tpay narco-extortionists.) The front-runner is Enrique Pe a Nieto, former Governor ofMexico state, near Mexico City, the candidate of the InstitutionalRevolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI ruled Mexico as a one-partydictatorship for 71 years until Calder n s conservative NationalAction Party (PAN) finally toppled it in the 2000 presidentialelections. During its 20 th -century reign, the PRI was infamous for drug corruption butbecause of its cozy arrangement with the cartels, drug violence inthose days was more controlled and less horrific, and many Mexicanshope the party s return to power will mean some sort of PaxPRI-ista. The only problem: today that looks all but impossible even for thePRI. Mexico s proliferating drug cartels, especially thebloodthirsty former military commandos known as the Zetas, who arebelieved responsible for Sunday s atrocity 75 miles south of theU.S.-Mexico border, seem well beyond any political control. Infact, some of Mexico s most violence-plagued states today, likenorthern Tamaulipas, are run by the PRI including formerTamaulipas Governor Tom s Yarrington, who left office in 2005 andwhom the U.S. accuses of laundering millions of dollars for gangslike the Zetas. (He denies it, and it should be noted the PAN hashad its own corruption scandals since 2000.) Which means that if Pe a wins and he leads his closestcompetitor by 17 points in voter polls the PRI will have to dobattle with the cartels, not do deals with them. Yet while Pe aacknowledged last week that public security is the issue that anguishes Mexicans most, he has yet to serve up much in the wayof a fresh tack aside from proposing a national gendarmerie, ora force of soldier-police officers. To many that s simply afancier name for what Calder n already has on Mexico s streets:soldiers playing cops because Mexico s cops are for the most parttoo corrupt and incompetent to rely on. Pe a to his credit alsocalls for more serious professionalization of judges, prosecutorsand police, including more homogeneously trained state forces; butCalder n has pushed similar legislation, only to see it languishinside Mexico s do-nothing Congress. That Congress s lower chamber is controlled by the PRI whichmakes Mexican pundits wonder if the party intends to finally passwhat is essentially Calder n s judicial reforms once Pe a isPresident. As cynical as that sounds, it s better thaninterminably blocking the reforms Mexico most needs. (Soldiersdon t bring down organized crime; professional cops do.) And that the prospect of less reform gridlock may be one big reasonPe a holds such a commanding lead over the PAN s JosefinaV squez Mota and Andr s Manuel L pez Obrador of the leftistDemocratic Revolution Party (PRD). Neither of those candidates is electrifying the electorate, either,when it comes to drug war solutions. V squez recently told the Wall Street Journal that she favors a militarized national police force of 150,000members; but again, how that differs from what s out there nowisn t very clear. For his part, L pez, who narrowly lost the 2006election to Calder n, has said only that he ll stop the war against the cartels and build a justice system with humanecriteria. The bottom line is that police and judicial reform is the onlylong-term solution to Mexico s narco-nightmare. (That and reduceddrug demand in the U.S., but given how stubbornly Washington clingsto its own failed drug war strategies, that s doubtful.) Theshort-term solution is improving economic opportunity forlower-income Mexicans (almost half the population still lives inpoverty) so they ll have alternatives to working for the drugcartels that rake in more than $30 billion a year. Calder n cameto that realization too late in his presidency, and the trio tryingto succeed him have made it a central plank of their platforms. Butif they don t want to see bodies stacked up on Mexican highwayswhen one of them hands off the presidency in 2018, they ll need toget more serious and specific about security. 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