Word: perots
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...gain of 200,000 American jobs in the next two years. That sounds impressive, but it is not much more than the 150,000 new jobs the U.S. domestic economy is creating every month, even at the present sluggish rate of employment growth. On the other side, Perot keeps talking about a "giant sucking sound" of factories, money and jobs being vacuumed into Mexico from the U.S. He is almost the only one who can hear it. Some treaty opponents have been kicking around a figure of 500,000 jobs that might be lost, but NAFTA proponents consider that projection...
...additional people who might be hired next year by a computer maker to put together more PCs for export to Mexico have no idea that might happen. Then too, there is a vague feeling that the U.S. has often let itself be played for a sucker in trade deals. Perot has harped on that, charging that "dumb" negotiations in the 1980s cost millions of U.S. jobs. The Administration did not help itself by choosing initially to fight on narrow economic grounds (read: jobs) rather than invoke the foreign-policy considerations that actually are more important. It also has been somewhat...
...from loyal activists who had worked hard for his election. One warned that he would never vote or work for Gillmor again if he voted for NAFTA; the other made precisely the same threat if the Congressman voted against the agreement. Republicans, however, have an extra problem: members of Perot's United We Stand America organization have been pushing hard against NAFTA in their districts, and Perot himself has been calling on them in Washington. William Goodling, a Pennsylvania Congressman, told the Texan the only time he could spare was at 7:30 a.m. Fine, said Perot, who showed...
Gillmor, Goodling and other Republicans say Perot has made no explicit threats to them. Nonetheless, they and others are seriously worried that the Texan and his followers will try to defeat them at the polls next year if they vote for NAFTA. That, says a White House official, is another reason why Clinton chose to take on Perot -- or have Gore do it -- in debate. If the White House can knock Perot down a peg, it will win the gratitude, and maybe the pro-NAFTA votes, of Republicans who would be afraid to tangle with Perot all alone...
...Given Perot's prowess as a debater, however, that is a very big if. The White House strategy of taking him on headfirst is risky in the extreme. But not doing so might have been even more chancy. And far too much is riding on the NAFTA vote -- for Clinton, Perot, Mexico, Latin America and the world -- for the President not to give it his best shot...