The Fun of the Free Trade Fiasco

As much as we favor free trade, and would like to see more of it with most of the advanced Asian economies, we must admit it’s been fun watching President Barack Obama’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership go down in flames. Even on one of the rare occasions when he seems to have the right idea, the president’s tendency to insult rather than argue with opponents, his secretiveness and opacity, his long record of being untrustworthy, his lack of legislative experience and personal relationships, and the rest of his usual leadership flaws are on such conspicuous display that even the Democrats are grousing about it.

This time around it’s the Democrats who are the targets of the president’s insults, so they’re mostly grousing about that. Longtime Democratic operative Brent Budowsky writes in The Observer that he has “never seen any president of either party insult so many members of his own party’s base and members of the House and Senate as Mr. Obama has in his weeks of tirades against liberals on trade,” and adds that “Mr. Obama’s tirades on trade have included accusations that these liberal Democrats are ignorant about trade policy, insincere when offering their opinions, motivated by politics and not the national interest, and backward looking toward the past.” We can’t recall Budowsky objecting when the president was saying Republicans want dirty air and dirty water, and telling them to “sit in the back,” or making countless similar accusations and slurs, but we’re pleased that he has belatedly come to the conclusion that  such invective is not presidential.

Nor is it very persuasive, judging by the president’s apparent inability to insult members of either party into line over the past four years or so, and even in the case of the Democrats it’s not at all accurate. Loathe as we are to defend Democrats, we’ll concede that most of the ones in the House and Senate have some familiarity with the arguments about free trade, even if they’ve reached what we consider the wrong conclusions, and we don’t doubt they’re all too sincere about the wrong things they say, and to whatever extent they have political motivations for opposing Obama we can only assume it is because they’ve wrongly concluded that a majority of their constituents and unionized donors will not benefit from free trade, and we actually would prefer that Democrats occasionally look backward to the past to see what has and hasn’t worked. Such well-intentioned stupidity should be met with reasoned and respectful argument rather than gratuitous ad hominem insults, but well-intentioned Republicans with better ideas have already learned that this is not the president’s style.

Irksome as the chore might be, we must also say in the Democrats’ defense that they’re right to complain about the president’s unwillingness to publicly divulge any of the details of the deal that he’s asking for fast-track approval to negotiate. The Democrats were willing to vote for Obamacare in order to find out what’s in it, a decision that many current and especially former members of Congress have come to regret, but this is about free trade rather than expensively and inefficiently bureaucratized health care so they’re not keen about the general idea in the first place, and thus we can hardly blame them for wanting a look at the fine print. We’re disappointed that even the most zealously pro-free trade Republicans aren’t just as skeptical, given the administration’s negotiations with Iran, and the very real possibility that Obama is motivated by western colonial guilt and has some sort of lopsided reparations deal in mind, and the noteworthy development that even Democrats no longer trust the guy, and so we find ourselves with most strange bedfellows on this issue.

A smoother presidential operator, armed with the unaccountable support of most of the opposition party, could probably prevail by taking a solid case to the American and pulling some parliamentary tricks and calling in some hard-earned favors from reluctant congressional allies, but both parties and even the press have by now figured out that’s not the president’s style. The president’s preferred style of insults and secrecy and demands that he be trusted invariably hardens the opposition, whether Republican or Democratic, and it seems likely to doom any chance of a good free trade agreement with most of the advanced economies of Asia, which would be great boon to the American economy, but we do admit it’s been great fun watching it nonetheless.

There’s always the possibility that the deal might be be a bad one, after all, so the missed opportunity of a good one is well worth the spectacle of the Democratic infighting. We note that the aforementioned Budowsky is especially insulted by the president’s especially pointed insults to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “the most nationally respected liberal leader in American politics,” and that the apparently still-existing National Organization for Women is grousing that the president’s criticisms are due to “sexism,” and that a smart fellow over at the right-wing Federalist has looked at the Democrats and concluded that “This Is Elizabeth Warren’s Party Now,” so it is comforting to contemplate that Obama remains anathema to the right and is no longer the most nationally respected figure of his party on the left and is therefor the lamest of ducks. It is not comforting to think that the Democratic party has lurched even further to the left during the Obama administration, but the defeat of the Trans Pacific Partnership will leave Obama and all the Democrats without any significant legislative achievement on the economy since Dodd-Frank and the Stimulus Package and Obamacare, none of which are well-remembered, and those Iran negotiations and that Israeli-Palestine “peace process” and the “re-set” with Russia aren’t likely to yield anything worth bragging about on the foreign policy front, so one can only hope that the next administration will be more likely to come up with the best deal.

In the meantime we’ll cope with the sluggish economy, and hope for the best, and enjoy the spectacle of Democrats enduring those presidential insults.

— Bud Norman

Losing a Halo

The president isn’t getting the same worshipful treatment from the media that he once enjoyed. Back in the heady days of hope and change he was routinely photographed with an angelic halo effect, but these days he’s being shown with luciferian horns sprouting from his graying head. Even the once-loyal scribes at the most polite publications are no longer apologists for his foreign policy, and although it’s not nearly so harsh as what any Republican would expect the treatment must be unsettling for a president accustomed to applause from the press row.

When the president ran for election on the argument that his Islamic name and Islamo-Marxist ancestry and primary education at an Islamic school in Indonesia and some sufficiently flattering and apologetic speeches delivered in his silver-tongued style to the Islamic world would quickly put an end to all that unpleasantness the west has endured in its relationship with Islam, the press happily went along with the preposterous notion. When he ran for re-election on the argument that it had worked, all the ongoing unpleasantness notwithstanding, the press went along with it again. Much more unpleasantness has occurred since, however, and by now the most prestigious organs of the establishment have at last grown weary of pretending otherwise.

The once-reliably supportive New York Times has been obliged to note that the president’s past declarations about “the tide of war is receding” and the terrorist threat is “on the run” and our remaining enemies are the “jayvee” team of terrorism were all wishful thinking. The Associated Press, all of places, is reporting that the president’s efforts to assemble a coalition to carry out his promised campaign against the Islamic State terror organization in Iraq and Syria is complicated by the distrust that the president’s past broken promises and unenforced “red lines” and shabby treatment of such allies as Israel and friendliness to such foes as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood have engendered among the world’s governments. With such standard bearers of the media unafraid to offer such blunt criticism, no one is any longer obliged to pretend that the president’s name, father, elementary school, and silver-tongued oratory are going soon bring about a lasting peace.

One can hope that the same publications will at long cast an equally clear on the president’s performance in domestic matters, but they haven’t yet. The ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal, which would have the press in a frenzy if it had happened during a Republican administration, remains largely ignored. A record number of long-term unemployed would have required a few thousand sob stories if it had happened just prior to the current administration, but is now usually relegated to the last paragraphs of stories emphasizing the slow but more-or-less steady growth in the economy if it is mentioned at all. There are plenty of problems to report about Obamacare, too, and there’s no telling what’s become of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors that strolled across the border that the president had declared secure, but for some reason these don’t seem to interest the media so much as the president’s foreign policy failures.

One might speculate that the mess overseas is harder to ignore, and that even the most established news outlets want to retain some credibility when it comes again to our shores, but the domestic woes are surely as apparent to the average reader or viewer. When Obamacare’s employer mandate finally kicks in during some safe-for-Democrats election cycle and the big networks and papers start kicking employees of the plans they liked and were promised they could keep there might be some stories about it, and when the other problems penetrate the more fashionable neighborhoods of Manhattan or Capitol Hill they might also get more attention, but until then the journalism industry is more concerned about journalists being beheaded and a once-comfortable world order falling into disarray.

The criticism and frank acknowledgement of reality in the foreign policy coverage is welcome, though, and we hope it spreads into the rest of the news.

— Bud Norman

A Break to the Border

So far as we can tell there were no new political scandals revealed on Wednesday, a sort of cool breeze of news to temporarily break the summer heat, so it seemed a good opportunity to look around at what else is going in Washington. There is apparently an immigration reform bill being considered in Congress, and the people pushing it are probably hoping the public is too distracted to notice, but all those scandals might wind up hurting the legislation’s chances of passage.

Immigration is one of those issues that defy the usual partisan and ideological categories, so the politics are complicated enough to begin with. The business wing of the Republican party has long championed unfettered immigration because it expands the supply of labor and thereby lowers its cost, while the working stiff wing of the party has opposed it for precisely the same reason. The union dues-paying working stiffs of the Democrat party once opposed illegal immigration with identical motives, and although their party loyalty has lately seemed to trump their economic self-interest there is still plenty of resistance in the ranks, while the professional politicians of the party have been eager to register a few million more voters that can be relied on to vote a straight big-government ticket. The multi-cultural liberals have also favored illegal immigration because they think it would be racist not to, and because they’re confident that they won’t be facing new competition for their sensitivity-training businesses and queer studies professorships, while the mostly white nativists of the Republican party and the mostly black nativists among the Democrats have been opposed.

A similarly mixed-up coalition of Senators has cooked up the current proposal, and they’ve tried to offer something for everyone. The bill would provide a “pathway to citizenship” for most of the illegal immigrants already in the country, but supporters are quick to insist that it’s not the same as amnesty, a word which tests badly in all the polls and focus groups, and they cross their hearts and hope to die as they pinky swear that this time it will be accompanied by the long-awaited crackdown that finally secures the border. Those tough-on-illegal-immigration provisions of a bill that would essentially legalize illegal immigration are the ones being touted by the bill’s Republican proponents, most prominently the former rising conservative star Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and an advertising campaign running on all the right-wing talk radio shows touts the bill as a severely right-wing program.

There are plenty of reasons for conservatives to be skeptical, however, and they seem to increase as the bill winds its way through the labyrinthine processes of the Congress. The Democratic-controlled Senate is intent on having their favored parts of the bill enacted before the country gets around to the messy business of enforcing the border, and the conventional wisdom of the moment is that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will show the necessary backbone — or cussed stubbornness, depending on your point of view — to kill the bill unless the border is secured first. Some wavering by the waver-prone Speaker of the House has many conservatives nervous that the Republicans will cave, but the representatives in his caucus are almost certain to hear from a compelling number of their constituents.

Although the tough-on-illegal-immigration provisions are appealing to the average conservative, and the “pathway to citizenship” not especially abhorrent is combined with border security, there is little trust in the promises being made. The past several decades of illegal immigration have justified this doubt, and the past months of revelations about governmental perfidy have only increased it. Democrats pushing the bill have reportedly asked President Barack Obama to keep his distance from the debate, lest his scandal-tainted brand tarnish their efforts, but at this point their entire party is being regarded with a heightened suspicion. The entire government, for the matter, is suddenly in position to argue “Trust us.”

— Bud Norman

A Tale of Two Cities

You could have knocked us over with a feather from an organically-fed free range chicken when we learned that Portland, Oregon, does not have fluoridated water. This surprising tidbit came to us courtesy of the Slate.com internet newsmagazine, which reported about an upcoming referendum on a proposal to begin adding fluoride to the city’s water supply, and it caught our eye because our very different town of Wichita, Kansas, had voted last November to reject a similar plan.

The local pro-fluoride forces made much of the fact that only four other large American cities don’t use the stuff, an obvious attempt at peer pressure, but we can’t recall them ever mentioning Portland is one of them, perhaps because Portland is widely considered such an impeccably hip civic peer that it was assumed no one would be embarrassed by the association. Slate, a news outlet also widely considered impeccably hip, is clearly confounded that such a paragon of progressive politics as Portland hasn’t embraced the practice and seems slightly flustered by the realization that the city’s progressivism is the reason why.

Among the groups the joining the cleverly-named Clean Water Portland coalition to lead the resistance to fluoridation are the Pacific Green Party, Nutritional Therapy Association, Organic Consumers Association, the Oregon Association of Acupuncture, and the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, although Slate takes pains to claim that the lattermost group is the “only local organization representing people of color that has come out against fluoride” and tries for the first time in the history of liberal journalism to dismiss the group’s political significance. Judging by the boisterous behavior described at town hall meetings and other political events it seems that the grassroots opposition to the initiative is similarly counter-cultural in its leanings. Slate reports with apparent alarm that the anti-fluoride forces are also joined by The Cascade Club, “a local libertarian think tank,” as well as the Kansas Taxpayers Network, described as “a far-right group that recently merged with the Americans for Prosperity,” but it concedes that the anti-fluoridation campaign in Portland carefully eschews conservative rhetoric and that “Such tactics would never work in this liberal city.”

The leftward opposition to fluoridation does not come as such a surprise to us, as all of the relatively small band of Occupy Wall Street sorts in the otherwise proudly un-hip town of Wichita were also adamant in their objections. Groups such as the aforementioned and Kansas Taxpayers Network were more prominent in the local debate, and naturally had no reluctance to couch their arguments in unabashadly conservative terms, but the far-lefties around here were an influental part of the alliance. We couldn’t help teasing the ones we’re friendliest with, regaling them with our imitation of Sterling Hayden’s “fluoride is a commie plot” speech from “Dr. Strangelove,” but they took it in good humor and for the most part seemed to get along with their unlikely allies.

Another unlikely alliance sprang up on the other side of the debate, with the more upscale liberals joining with the more moderate conservatives in citing the consensus of the academic establishment and insisting that Wichita get in step with the rest of the country. Upscale liberals and moderate conservatives are always very much impressed with the consensus of the academic establishment, and around here they’re both very sensitive to perceptions that we’re out of step with the rest of the country, so perhaps it wasn’t such an unlikely alliance. Fluoride advocates such as the Slate reporters tend to overstate the unanimity of scientific on the subject, and fail to mention such dissenting research as a study from oh-so-respectable Harvard University that links fluoride to a decline in human intelligence, but there does seem to be enough of a consensus for the people who are cowed by that sort of thing.

The far left, though, for all its faults, retains an admirable skepticism of establishment opinion. Slate explains that the anti-fluoride campaign in Portland relies on “attachment to the environment and natural health care, as well as the current mistrust of pretty much all institutions.” That last cause is the one that allowed the far- left to work so peacefully with its far-right counterparts on the anti-fluoride campaign here, and it could point the way to alliances on other issues. Wichita also had a referendum a while back on the city government’s sweetheart deal with some out-of-town hotel developers who had taken a strange interest in local politics during the preceding fund-raising efforts by some local politicians, and the crony capitalism deal was soundly defeated with votes from conservatives appalled by the cronyism and liberals offended by the capitalism. The same coalition on a national scale could help eliminate all the public-private boondoggles buried in the stimulus bill and various other Obama initiatives, although it will be hard to pry even the most far-left activists away from their party loyalties. If they can ever be made to understand that the essence of the liberal project is to further empower the institutions they distrust, however, anything is possible.

— Bud Norman