"what convinced her...was not... the merits of NAFTA, but... that it was a good political decision."

Stephanie

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Mon Feb-25-08 09:08 PM
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"what convinced her...was not... the merits of NAFTA, but... that it was a good political decision."

Edited on Mon Feb-25-08 09:29 PM by Stephanie

Once again, we don't actually know Clinton's position on NAFTA, because she doesn't want us to know. She privately opposed it? But she publicly supported it? She was against it before she was for it? This is Hillary Clinton's fatal flaw. She is defeating HERSELF with her fundamental insincerity. Nobody knows what she really believes. She doesn't even know.

This factcheck.org article is being touted as vindicating Clinton's criticism of Obama's mailer, but it does no such thing. Yes, they should not have used the quote marks on "boon," but they took the original Newsday reporting as accurate. That's a reasonable mistake. But for HRC to claim that she has never supported NAFTA? She's lying. Whether she supported it simply because it was the expedient thing to do is another question, but she certainly did make remarks that sound just like a NAFTA supporter.

So I'm supposed to feel better that she didn't really believe in NAFTA but only supported it out of political expediency? Uh, no thanks.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_mailings_false.html

On the front of the four-page NAFTA mailer appears a headline saying, "Hillary Clinton believed NAFTA was 'a boon' to our economy." But in fact, Clinton never used the word "boon" to describe the effects of the trade agreement on the U.S. economy, and it's not clear she ever said anything like that.

The Obama mailer quotes a New York newspaper article that ran during her 2006 Senate reelection campaign. Two reporters for the Long Island daily Newsday gave brief descriptions of her stands on a number of issues, including this:

Newsday, Sept. 11, 2006: HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Clinton thinks NAFTA has been a boon to the economy, but voted against the Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, saying it would drive jobs offshore.

The day after the mailer surfaced, another Newsday reporter, Dan Janison, conceded that the newspaper didn't get that from Clinton or her campaign.

Newsday's Dan Janison, Feb. 14: The word {"boon"} was our characterization of how we best understood her position on NAFTA, based on a review of past stories and her public statements. ... We do not have a direct quote indicating her campaign told us she thought it was good for the economy at that time.

We frankly find Clinton's past position on NAFTA to be ambivalent. Bloomberg News reported last year that Clinton "promoted her husband's trade agenda for years." Bloomberg quoted her at the 1998 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as praising corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of Nafta,'' and adding, "It is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun."

On the other hand, Clinton biographer Sally Bedell Smith says Clinton privately argued against NAFTA inside the White House and was "not very much in favor of free trade." In an interview with Tim Russert on MSNBC last year she said:

Sally Bedell Smith, Oct. 27, 2007: And Hillary was really prepared to try and kill NAFTA. {Special Trade Representative} Mickey Kantor had to take her out ... behind the White House, sat her down on a bench, and said, we have to go first with NAFTA. We can come back to health care later, but we have to do NAFTA because we need a success and we need a bipartisan success. And he was absolutely right. And what convinced her at the time was not necessarily the merits of NAFTA, but the fact that it was a good political decision.

So, even then, she was not very much in favor of free trade. And so she is consistent. And Bill Clinton continues to be. So, if they were both in the White House together, I wouldn�t want to be in the middle of that little fight.

Gary R. Edson, Oct. 18, 1993: NAFTA should be made the clear priority, with a concerted campaign involving the entire administration, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose silence on the issue has been deafening.

And about the same time, a National Journal reporter quoted pro-NAFTA lobbyists as complaining that Hillary was undermining efforts to get the trade pact approved out of fear that pushing for it would alienate supporters of the administration's health care proposal. The headline: "If NAFTA's Bogging Down, Is Hillary to Blame?"

We take no position here on whether NAFTA is a boon to the economy or a detriment, and note only that there are plenty of arguments on both sides. We do judge that the Obama campaign is wrong to quote Clinton as using words she never uttered, and it has produced little evidence that she ever had strong praise of any sort for NAFTA's economic benefits.

Dear FactCheck.Org,

Please read David Sirota:

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4137

Here's another direct quote from Hillary Clinton on NAFTA from a speech she gave to the DLC in 2002:

"We all know the record of the DLC, the Progressive Policy Institute and, of course, the Clinton-Gore Administration. The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady Bill. Family Leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets. Charter schools. The Earned Income Tax Credit. The welfare to work partnership. The COPS program. The SAFER program. All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves. Those ideas were converted into policies programs that literally changed millions of lives and, I argue, changed America."

Yes, that's right. NAFTA is cited by Clinton as a shining example of successful "ideas were converted into policies programs that literally changed millions of lives and, I argue, changed America."