Word: perots
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...could Bill Clinton have been thinking of? He was making progress toward persuading Congress to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement, and looked likely -- but far from certain -- to win an excruciatingly close House vote next Wednesday. So why risk giving last-minute national TV exposure to Ross Perot, NAFTA's loudest foe? Especially in the form of a debate with Vice President Al Gore, whose wooden performance in a face-off against Dan Quayle last fall contrasted painfully with Perot's barbed wisecracks in his own debates with Clinton and George Bush...
This manipulation of xenophobia by NAFTA supporters is especially troubling since the ultimate goal of NAFTA is to create an open global trade community--a task that is impossible if nations cultivate distrust in one another. Put aside Clinton's exaggerated promises of job creation and Perot's hysterical warnings of job loss. (Perot's most recent figure is 85 million--a full third of the entire U.S. population...
Most economists who aren't on the Clinton or Perot payrolls agree that the economic effects of NAFTA on the U.S would be minimal. Rejection of NAFTA, though, would symbolize a trend toward U.S. protectionism that would encourage similar trends worldwide and jeopardize global free trade negotiations...
Politicians are expert emotional-button pushers, and Ross Perot is the unquestioned champion of them all. But as Gore said last night while he was wining the CNN studio floor with Perot's bruised ego, "The politics of negativism and fear only...
Those are wise words, and both Perot and his White House foes should heed them. NAFTA supporters do Americans no favor when they decry Perot's demagoguery and then employ demagogic and divisive tactics for their own purposes...