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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (53330)	7/8/2004 6:12:51 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793917

ASKING FOR TRADE TROUBLE By NICOLE GELINAS NY POST July 8, 2004 -- PRESIDENTS George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have spent the past decade making slow progress on free trade. Would a Kerry/Edwards victory stall America's advancement of the global marketplace? John Kerry's new running mate, John Edwards, is an ardent protectionist — and likely to have real influence on the issue if the ticket wins. Kerry himself is a moderate on trade. Sure, he did spend the spring railing belatedly against the North American Free Trade Agreement. But even as Kerry accused Bush of shipping American jobs to cheap labor markets abroad, he never pledged to cancel America's trade deals — he calls only for a vague 120-day "review" of NAFTA. Kerry's real position on trade is evident from his votes for NAFTA in 1993, and a decade for giving Bush fast-track authority to negotiate new trade agreements. Kerry has voted in recent years to expand trade with 70 countries — and has never voted to isolate America from its economic allies. But Edwards' anti-trade rhetoric is real. " is a place where this difference really matters," he lectured Kerry at a February debate. He went on to list the protectionist votes he had cast in five years in the Senate — against trade with Chile, Singapore, Africa and the Caribbean. Edwards won his Senate seat on an unabashed campaign against the evils of NAFTA. During his presidential run this year, he pledged to re-negotiate that agreement. This stark position on trade is startling, even for a Democrat from a state where protectionism's fairly popular. Take last year's agreements with Singapore and Chile. Both are developing nations — but they're hardly backwaters. Congress OK'd the deals by wide margins in both parties. And when Edwards voted against trade with Africa, he voted once more against fellow Democrats — including those who represent blocs of minority voters. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) campaigned tirelessly for the trade deals with Africa and the Caribbean — to encourage American investment in two neglected regions of the world. Edwards says he won't vote for agreements that don't include strict labor and environmental standards. But the Singapore and Chile deals did include standards strong enough to mollify solidly pro-labor Democrats like New York Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. Stronger environmental and labor language would impose U.S. standards on the developing world — and so render trade accords with emerging nations self-canceling. Kerry made this point to Howard Dean last fall: Higher standards "means we would trade with no countries." America helps no one by isolating the world's fledgling economies: Nations can best achieve environmental and labor reforms when their leaders are accountable to their own middle-class voters. So how will Kerry and Edwards advance a cohesive agenda on trade — when Edwards told Kerry in February that he takes trade "very, very personally"? Edwards' take on trade matters. Bush has inked preliminary trade deals with Morocco, Australia and Central America — but Congress won't vote on all of them before the election. (Bush's reps are also working on a NAFTA-style accord for South America.) Some congressional Democrats are malleable on trade. Rangel, for example, got a few anti-trade New York Democrats to vote for the Africa agreement. Would — could — a Vice President Edwards convince Democrats to vote for new trade pacts? To expand NAFTA to South America — after Edwards' impassioned denouncements of trade with Mexico? It's not just an economic issue; it's a matter of national security, too. Increased U.S. trade with the nations of the Middle East would offer restive Muslim populations new educational and economic opportunities. Take Jordan, one of the region's few economic success stories: Edward Gresser of the pro-trade Progressive Policy Institute points out that U.S.-Jordan trade grew from $16 million in 1998 to $673 million last year due to a Clinton-era free trade deal. Bush's proposed agreement with Morocco, coupled with U.S. investment in Iraq, could be the start of a loose regional free-trade bloc for the Arab world. But Edwards' push for gold-plated labor and environmental standards would likely kill any Morocco accord. Winning trade votes is tricky — members of both parties in Congress move freely in the gray areas between isolationism and internationalism. Administration lobbying changes votes — and those votes could help open the world. But some Democrats from manufacturing states need an extra nudge on the issue — and John Edwards is unlikely to push very hard. E-mail: nicolegeli@hotmail.com NEW YORK POST

To: LindyBill who wrote (53330)	7/8/2004 6:21:47 AM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793917

Bill, Am waiting for you to come aboard the powell, giuliani, or mccain bandwagon. Cheney will give it up in a heartbeat to help bush. They have to figure out first whether browstein is right and how they are going to run before deciding whether to dump dick and who to replace him with. It probably wont happen but i will bet you one of those umbrella drinks that it is being considered and studied. Other possibilities in lieu of or in addition to the VEEP thing are moving Powell to Defense with a rummy resignation which i do think will happen anyway at some point; Giuliani to Justice as even safire called for ashcroft to go; Or Mccain to the cabinet at state or defense. My choice is for a radical preelection move. Cheney goes. McCain on the ticket. Powell to Defense as Rummy says he is leaving as planned. Rudy to Justice. Bush reinvented vs Kerry and the ambulance chaser?? My gut tells me that regardless of how early it is, bush will lose unless he takes a bold step like this. Keep the base and expand it to compete among independents who sort of like edwards and lets be honest sort of hate cheney. Cheney is tarred unfairly by the halliburton association but is the orchestrator of a war which went badly after victory was declared. Move McCain or Powell in there and the american people may give bush a second look. Mike

To: LindyBill who wrote (53330)	7/8/2004 7:09:43 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 793917

Bob Novak has an excellent column this morning on the unbalanced Democratic ticket. townhall.com The unbalanced ticket Robert Novak July 8, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Whatever John Edwards does for a Democratic ticket led by John Kerry, he does not bring it balance. Apart from harsh words exchanged during the primary campaign season, the party's future presidential and vice-presidential nominees disagree on little (capital punishment and international trade are exceptions). Kerry-Edwards is an unbalanced ticket. Ratings by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) for 2003 (the last year when both Sen. Kerry and Sen. Edwards were around to cast votes most of the time) put both in the same ideological pigeonhole. Out of 20 votes selected by the ADA for that year, not one found the two Democrats opposing each other. Neither voted against the ADA liberal line on any issue. They voted together opposing Miguel Estrada for judicial confirmation, killing Alaska oil drilling, opposing tax reduction, opposing Iraq reconstruction and opposing Republican prescription drug benefits. There is no sign Kerry was serious about reaching out to a more moderate running mate as John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Michael Dukakis did with mixed results. Nor do Kerry's advisers take seriously the notion that Edwards, who looked like a loser for re-election in his own state of North Carolina this year before he dropped out, can win Southern electoral votes against George W. Bush. Why, then, was Edwards favored for vice president from the start, according to Kerry sources? The answer given is that Kerry wanted somebody best equipped to serve as vice president and succeed to the presidency if need be in a time of national peril. It is difficult to imagine a golden-voiced trial lawyer, who has been a less than distinguished U.S. senator in the first public office he has held, filling that description. Edwards's allure stems from the stir he created in the Democratic primaries after Kerry had swept to the front against Howard Dean. Following a lackluster beginning as a purported Southern moderate, Edwards plunged rhetorically to Kerry's left. In the summer of 2002, he described himself to me as "generally in the mainstream of America," adding: "I don't think we should pit one group of Americans against another." In the winter of 2004, his "Two Americas" formulation won praise from Democratic enthusiast James Carville as "the best stump speech I've ever heard." What appealed to Louisianan Carville did not go over that well with other Southerners. While winning in his neighboring state of South Carolina, Edwards finished behind Kerry in Tennessee, Virginia and border state Oklahoma. The sentiment for Kerry-Edwards came not from Dixie but from the Howard Dean movement. Since neither ticket-balancing nor an appeal to the South seems high on the Kerry agenda, what took so long to pick Edwards? Organized labor was pressing hard for Gephardt, who had a good personal relationship with Kerry. However, Kerry's real affection seemed directed toward Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, whose support (through his wife, Christie) helped save him in Iowa's critically important caucuses. Vilsack attracted Democrats who, looking at Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, wanted a governor on the ticket. However, political problems were posed by both Gephardt and Vilsack. Survivors of the Dean movement, cool enough toward Kerry by himself, would be frozen by Kerry-Gephardt. The fact that Kerry-Vilsack would have put two Roman Catholics on the ticket was daunting to some Democrats. But, according to Kerry advisers, Vilsack's problem was a resume that does not go beyond the borders of Iowa, a handicap in debating Vice President Dick Cheney about the war against terrorism. A fourth contender, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, was seriously considered but rejected for being a little too quirky. The irony is that Kerry, who disdained ticket-balancing in picking Edwards, probably would have gone for Sen. John McCain for the ultimate balanced ticket in the impossible event that the Republican would say yes. McCain, who is hawkish, pro-life, pro-nuclear power and anti-trial lawyer, voted the ADA line on only seven of its 20 selected votes in 2003 (a 35 percent liberal rating). John McCain would have been the first vice president since LBJ in 1960 to influence a presidential election's outcome. John Edwards will not.