From Sap to Superhero.(Argentine president Nestor Kirchner tackles reform agenda and gains public support)

Argentine president Nestor Kirchner didn't exactly storm into office. He won the first round of the election with just 22 percent of the vote, then captured the presidency by default when Carlos Menem (facing defeat) pulled out of the runoff. With little support in Congress or from the country's bureaucracy, Kirchner had a shaky mandate, to say the least. Analysts wasted little time labeling him a frontman for his Peronist predecessor, Eduardo Duhalde, and the weakest president in the country's history.

But less than a month later, they're having to eat their words. Kirchner has tackled a reform agenda with the fiery ardor of an independent. He has sacked several top military officers, an unprecedented move, fired half of the senior staff of the Federal Police and persuaded Congress to hold hearings next month to impeach the deeply unpopular Supreme Court president, Julio Nazareno. He flew off to the provinces to personally resolve a couple of teachers' strikes, then announced a package of measures aimed at reducing tax evasion. He's also challenged the nation's utility operators to meet the terms of their contracts or risk having them canceled. The man whose nickname only a few weeks ago was "Chirolita," a famous puppet, is now being described as "super-Kirchner."

Kirchner's political blitzkrieg has pleasantly stunned Argentines. A month ago most people didn't know how to pronounce the name of this former governor of Santa Cruz, a largely uninhabited Patagonian province. What's more, Argentina has been in political disarray for so long that citizens had be-come accustomed to caretaker governments. Kirchner's seemed yet another. Like all pols, Kirchner made campaign promises, but few people actually expected him to fulfill them. The mistake, according to Sergio Berensztein, a political scientist at Torcuato di Tella University, was to underestimate the strength of the Argentine presidency. "All presidents have real power," he says. "Whether they use it or not is another question."

Kirchner has not only grabbed it, but proved himself to be a wily politician. He has so far chosen his targets carefully, mainly making changes that don't require the backing of Congress or the courts. Presenting himself as a "common man" fighting against corruption and injustice, he's appealed directly to the public for support. The strategy has worked. Though it's early days, his job-performance approval rating has ...