Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 17, 1993 TAG: 9311170128
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RONALD BROWNSTEIN LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
For most of their history, the Democrats have been the most committed to lowering trade barriers. The Republicans were born as a protectionist party - and remained immovably so for a century. Now, it is a foregone conclusion that most votes against NAFTA will come from Democrats, using arguments commonly voiced by Republicans in years past.
Swimming upstream against this partisan current has placed President Clinton in an unusual and precarious position: pressing a major international initiative against opposition centered in his own party.
In the face of the widespread Democratic skepticism about the agreement's economic wisdom, Clinton has consciously sought support by broadening the terms of debate: He is framing the NAFTA decision as a test not only of America's economic strategy but of the commitment to international involvement that has defined national policy since World War II.
"Clinton has really put himself in the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower tradition," says investment banker Robert D. Hormats, a former senior international economic official in both Republican and Democratic administrations. "These were presidents who understood that a more open world, a more open global economy, is in the interest of the United States."
The agreement may rise or fall largely on whether Clinton has made enough progress at reversing a generation-long erosion of that conviction among Democrats.
Only rarely in American history has a president's own party provided the principal resistance to one of his top foreign policy priorities. Previous examples - most prominently the resistance of Democratic liberals to Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War - have sometimes foreshadowed challenges in the primaries to sitting presidents, though it does not appear NAFTA will leave wounds deep enough to inspire a revolt from the populist left against Clinton in 1996.
Like most trade legislation, the NAFTA vote is not a pure test of free-trade sentiment. To broaden support for the deal, Clinton has accepted protections for anxious industries, such as Florida citrus and vegetable growers, and cut an unknown number of other deals.
Even with those concessions, most analysts agree the vote offers a clear referendum on whether legislators believe the nation is best served by accelerating or resisting integration of the global economy.
Neither party is monolithic on that question. Dozens of Republicans will vote against NAFTA today; dozens of Democrats will support it. But Democrats are leading the opposition, and it is virtually certain that more than half the House Democrats will vote against it, while as many as two-thirds of Republicans will support it.
This alignment turns on its head the partisan divisions on international economics for more than 150 years and reflects, above all, the changing views of American business and labor about trade.
by CNB