Lula needs Brazilians to believe that lightning can strike twice

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is eager to run a campaign of contrasts against incumbent Jair Bolsonaro this year. He will compare the economic boom the country experienced during his presidency — 2003-2010, during which Brazil went from being the world’s 13th-largest economy to the sixth — to the scorched-earth scenario over which Mr. Bolsonaro currently presides. 

Under Mr. Bolsonaro and his hapless former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo, the country went from being an internationally acclaimed rising geopolitical player to a global pariah. 

Lula will tell a story of the economic progress he achieved in the past that he intends to reignite in the future. So far, that memory has helped push him miles ahead of the competition in the polls, but could he repeat the feat that earned him astronomical approval ratings a decade ago?

Between 2000 and 2014, across Latin America, the rate of those living in poverty declined from about 27 to 12 percent. Meanwhile, inequality dropped by almost 11 percent. Ravi Balakrishnan and Frederik Toscani, writing for the official International Monetary Fund blog in 2018, attributed this in large part to a commodity boom that enabled governments to invest in social programs that ameliorated the effects of the region’s vast inequities. 

“The booming commodity sector expanded and drew...