DECEMBER 01, 14:27 EST

By NIKO PRICE
Associated Press Writer

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Scion of a gentleman farmer, Vicente Fox made good in the corporate world and then left it all to transform himself into a politician the likes of which Mexico has never seen.

On Friday he became Mexico's new leader, the first in the country's history to peacefully wrest the presidency from the party in power.

He did so with his startling presence - a 6-foot-5 rancher in cowboy boots. With his charisma - his ability to get people to believe in him is legendary. With his persistence - his tireless campaign began early in his predecessor's term.

And with his proposals, laid out in simple language easily understandable to the humblest of Mexicans: more education, more loans, more jobs and less corruption.

Fox, 58, draws his style from his childhood in San Cristobal, a village in north-central Guanajuato state that grew up around his family's farming businesses.

Among his friends, he saw poverty of the kind most Mexican politicians glimpse only from the window of a passing SUV. Among his family, he saw the damage that bad economic policy has wrought on small and medium businesses.

And from a college professor - a Jesuit priest - he understood that people like him were doing nothing to change any of that.

Fox, who had risen from soft drink deliveryman to president of Coca-Cola Mexico, had a crisis of conscience and decided in mid-career that he would be different. An invitation to enter politics from an opposition presidential candidate confirmed his decision.

He immediately set his sights on the presidency, starting with a congressional seat in 1988. He was cheated out of the governor's office in 1991, but won easily the next time around in 1995. His undeclared presidential campaign had already begun.

Touring much of Mexico and much of the world in what could be Mexico's longest campaign ever, Fox drummed up investments and marketed himself like the soft drink he once transformed into the national leader.

On July 2, he defeated the presidential ruling-party candidate at the polls, a victory that only months earlier had seemed a fantasy.

As he takes on the presidency, much of his homespun style will come with him. Fox and his four adopted children - he is divorced - will move into guest quarters behind the presidential residence; his daughter Ana Cristina says the residence ``is too much house for us.''

He continues to wear his boots and giant ``FOX'' belt buckle, and hints he might drop the coat and tie for most presidential appearances.

And as he milked a cow and strolled through broccoli fields last weekend, the image he presented was starkly different from any of Mexico's previous presidents: a normal joe, a bit brighter than most, who just happened to have won the presidency.