Triangulation Gone Wild

  • Hillary Clinton effectively batted back attacks from her Democratic rivals in last night's CNN debate, but laid the seeds for future Republican attacks on her trade positions, which to be charitable appear evasive and tricky. She's an effective debater, but in large part because she so clearly manages to avoid answering specific questions about her views.

    Asked if she agreed with Ross Perot that the 1993 NAFTA free trade agreement her husband pushed through Congress was a mistake, she immediately commenced evasive maneuvers. "All I can remember from that is a bunch of charts." When pressed, she would only say: "NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we hoped it would."

    Mrs. Clinton is clearly trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, she waffles on NAFTA and calls for a "timeout" on any new trade agreements. But she also doesn't want to explicitly repudiate her husband's free trade record. As the Los Angeles Times reported last month: "Appearing before free-trade supporters, she has praised the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement, which is loathed by many unions. But speaking to a union audience as a presidential candidate, Clinton said NAFTA hurt workers."

    One of the biggest problems for Mrs. Clinton is Mrs. Clinton, who effusively praised NAFTA in her best-selling 2003 memoir, writing that "a free trade zone in North America -- the largest free trade zone in the world -- would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our economy was reaping the benefits, not the burdens of globalization."

    Is it any wonder that former Senator Bill Bradley, a 2000 Democratic presidential candidate, openly questions if Democrats are being given enough information about what a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like? "We don't know what Hilary would do," he says, "because she hasn't gotten down to the three or four things that she'd do."