Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Free trader President Clinton veers left in Seattle. But will his finesse be enough to keep Al Gore's Democratic Party intact?
Dec 3, 1999 | President Clinton, bobber and weaver, master of ambiguity, may walk away from Seattle without a political catastrophe, but it all depends on what the Democrats learn from this astounding week.
On the largest questions at stake in this week's collision between what may well turn out to be the dominant political passions of our time, Clinton veered and tacked so adroitly as to draw diametrically opposed treatments on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The Post's Clinton is the one with his ear tilted upward, to big money, and even higher, to the celestial spheres whose music has the ring of free trade. The headline: "Clinton Defends Open Trade; President Condemns Seattle Violence." Only in the 10th paragraph did the Post reader come upon Clinton addressing what he delicately called "all the interesting hoopla that's been going on here." Here the president addressed the tens of thousands of nonviolent protesters graciously: "For those who came here to peacefully make their point, I welcome them here because I want them to be integrated into the longer-term debate." (Immediately he also condemned "those who came here to break windows and hurt small businesses or stop people from going to meetings or having their say.")
Meanwhile, the Times' Clinton has his ear to the ground. This is the Clinton of "Putting People First," the Clinton of the 1992 bus ride through Ohio with Al Gore, the Clinton who knows that protest came rumbling to the surface this week not because of some raging anarchists but because a lot of people are properly anxious about whether the big players in global commerce have their interests at heart. The Times observed this president to be on a listening tour, not only respectful of protest but mindful of the legitimacy of some of its demands. The headline: "Clinton, Acknowledging Protests, Calls On [World Trade Organization] To Be Less Secretive." The Times moved on to quote Clinton using a verb not commonly uttered by presidents in public: "I implore you: Let's continue to find ways to prove that the quality of life of ordinary citizens in every country can be lifted, including basic labor standards and an advance on the environmental front."
Mindful of the powerless, the president implores the powers. Two headlines, in effect, for two wings of the Democratic Party. But the net effect is to give Clinton a graceful out from the free-market orthodoxies that thrill the Wall Street side of his coalition. He, and would-be president Al Gore, have a chance to excite some of their base hitherto left cold even by the triumphs that have trickled down to them.
The chance is the result of Clinton having, at the least, skirted a disaster partly of his own making. Recall that the Seattle WTO meeting was supposed to be a crowning spectacle for a free-trading president surfing the crest of the expansionist tide that is the Democrats' strongest appeal. The shiny symbolism of Seattle, after all! The city next door to Redmond! Starbucks! Boeing! Amazon! Seattle seems like a shrine of forward-looking, brand-name, 401(k) America. But for many reasons, not least widespread suspicion of America's entitlement to be the conductor of the orchestra of world power, the collaborators Clinton expected decided not to give him the pleasure of their company.
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