The Democrats have no trade policy, or at least none that they are willing to talk about. We have already seen how Barack Obama openly campaigned against NAFTA while his campaign surrogates quietly assured the Canadians that he didn't really mean it. Now we discover that Hillary Clinton's own Karl Rove, Mr. Mark Penn, was hired by the Columbian Government to promote a free-trade deal with the U.S., while Senator Clinton attacked that agreement on the campaign trail.
This pair of parallel micro-scandals suggests a deep cognitive dissonance in the party. Cognitive dissonance is what you suffer from when you think you are driving in, say, Springfield Missouri, but are in fact turning a corner in downtown Hong Kong. My, but there are a lot of Chinese Restaurants and architecture in this Midwestern city! The Democrats campaign as if it were possible to protect American workers by isolating our economy from the world. That is where a lot of Democrats want to think their party are driving. But if Senators Clinton and Obama are both shameless liars on such matters, they are not fools. They know that any substantial moves toward protectionism will hurt more Americans than those who benefit; otherwise, why send (or allow) your agents contrary to your official positions? I find this sort of thing rather comforting.
Unfortunately, there is a real world out there beyond Pennsylvania. At a time when Hugo Chavez is trying to unite Latin America against the U.S., it might not be such a good idea to insult Columbia, which is a steadfast ally of ours. Here is John Fund at the Wall Street Journal:
Colombia is a democratic ally of the U.S. in a tough neighborhood. Alvaro Uribe, its president, has been battling a left-wing insurgency that has used kidnapping, murder and drug trafficking in an attempt to overthrow his government. An impressive body of evidence shows the insurgents, known as the FARC, have been encouraged and financed by Venezuela's strongman, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Chavez, who already has allies in charge of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, would love to extend his influence in Latin America.
The trade agreement shouldn't be controversial. Colombia's economy is doing well, with growth rates of some 6% a year, and more than 90% of its exports to the U.S. already are duty-free under previous agreements. The new proposed trade pact would strip dozens of high tariffs Colombia erects to restrict the flow of U.S. goods and services in.
American unions demanded that the agreement incorporate labor and environmental standards. They got their wish, but that wasn't enough for some unions, which leaned on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to make opposition to the agreement a theme of their presidential campaigns.
That last part is the kicker. What is at issue is not any substantive policy, but whose view of the world will the two Democratic candidates be loyal to. The unions don't really care about their brethren in Columbia, or the global environment; they want to know that their domestic concerns will trump any other issue.
If Senator Obama were really interested in a new kind of politics, this would be a good opportunity to speak truth to union power. He might say what he obviously knows: it won't do benefit either our own workers of their Columbian counterparts to keep the last few restrictions on trade between our nations. He might point out that, as President, he would have to be concerned about supporting our allies and defeating murderous and tyrannical insurgencies in our hemisphere. I think that such responsible words would in fact do more for his eventual election than anything else he could do right now.
Senator Clinton cannot take such responsible positions. No one has had reason to believe anything she says since the 1970's. But of course, neither can Senator Obama. His party won't let him. It is not ready to let go of a fanciful view of the world.
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