Bush Hadta Have CAFTA
BARNES, FRED
Bush Hadta Have CAFTA The lame duck wins again. BY FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH went to bed at the normal time, roughly 10 p.m., on the night the House of Representatives voted on the Central...
...In the past, trade treaties sailed through the Senate, but CAFTA was ratified only 54-45—and that masks how difficult it was for Republicans to put together a mere majority...
...Thomas is also pragmatic...
...Fidel Castro and his acolyte, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, are desperately trying to undermine the democratically elected and mostly pro-American governments of Central America...
...Presidents have usually gotten their way when they've pushed for more open trade, but after a half century, the free trade consensus on Capitol Hill has collapsed...
...The House has traditionally looked even less favorably on free trade...
...The White House, indeed Bush's entire administration, was mobilized for this vote...
...With John Roberts as his nominee, the president is on his way to transforming the Supreme Court into the conservative body that Republicans have dreamed about for decades...
...But more important to Bush than its economics or symbolism is CAFTA's national security value...
...Had they succeeded, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi would be gloating on national TV about the demise of the Bush presidency...
...Why does that matter...
...Three Republicans—Robin Hays of North Carolina, Steve LaTourette of Ohio, Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—had simultaneously Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Why the extraordinary effort...
...voted for the treaty and it had won...
...A cell phone with the president on the line was passed by Bush's chief congressional lobbyist, Candida Wolff, from congressman to congressman...
...And it would be true...
...If CAFTA had failed, Bush's entire trade agenda would have been off the table for the remainder of his second term...
...Instead, it lives...
...He went back to bed, only to be called a few moments later by Karl Rove, his political adviser and deputy chief of staff...
...For all the media chatter about Bush as a diminished force in Washington, he and congressional Republicans have put together a string of impressive victories with more to come...
...The other Republican who mattered was whip Roy Blunt...
...Bush worked harder for CAFTA— and stayed up later—than he had for the vote in 2003 on his Medicare prescription drug benefit...
...Both Bush and the democratic leaders in Central America believe CAFTA will bolster their economies and strengthen them against leftist radicals of the Castro/Chavez ilk...
...He also provides cutrate oil wealth to Castro's Cuba...
...After seeing the prospects for enacting Social Security reform fade, Bush needed a victory...
...it wasn't because the treaty with Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic was so important to the American economy...
...They would like to see the Marxist Sandinistas regain power in Nicaragua, for instance, and Chavez is pumping money from his country's oil wealth into that project, among others...
...Exports from the United States to the six countries total about $15 billion a year...
...Two Republican leaders played significant roles in passing CAFTA...
...True, the treaty does integrate the six economies more tightly with our own...
...Thus, in his address to House Republicans, the president devoted much of his speech to this issue...
...He may be the most energized and successful lame duck in the history of the modern presidency...
...And it has symbolic value: the big guy to the north embracing his little brothers to the south...
...The total for CAFTA looked to be stuck at 214, not enough for passage...
...Meanwhile, countries all over the world—in the Middle East especially—are clamoring to negotiate free trade treaties with the United States...
...Relieved, Bush went back to bed again...
...For days, Bush met with House members individually and in small groups...
...A second reason for Bush's enthusiasm for CAFTA is his trade agenda...
...Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is an ardent free trader and a genius at drafting legislation that only he understands fully...
...Meanwhile, the economy is so robust that Democrats rarely mention it...
...He sure is...
...For the first time in the post-World War II era, the leaders of a party made it their policy to defeat a free trade agreement...
...It's exactly what you'd think: politics...
...Rove was deeply involved, too, making calls and office visits and having lunch with one House member whose vote was critical...
...He promised all year that he could produce enough votes to ratify CAFTA, and he finally persuaded the White House...
...Is Bush a lame duck...
...it was after midnight...
...BY FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH went to bed at the normal time, roughly 10 p.m., on the night the House of Representatives voted on the Central American Free Trade Agreement...
...But he was awakened by White House staffers to talk to wavering Republicans on the House floor...
...Or at least he had to stave off a Democratic win...
...To qualify for a trade agreement with the United States, countries must adopt the practices of democratic capitalism, which means a treaty might achieve what it took a war to accomplish in Iraq...
...He traveled to Capitol Hill to address the House Republican conference on the morning of the vote, speaking passionately for nearly 45 minutes with no notes, then answering a dozen questions...
...It passed, dissipating some of the anxiety over China...
...There's a third reason CAFTA was so important to Bush...
...Then Bush watched the vote count on C-SPAN before giving up...
...That's roughly the buying power of the greater Sacramento metropolitan area...
...Better yet, he delivered...
...He allowed a vote on a bill requiring the monitoring of China's trade practices to come before CAFTA...
...Democrats offered a series of unconvincing explanations for their opposition, but their transparent motive was to deal a serious blow to Bush...
...Instead, Bush is revived and ready to take another shot at overhauling Social Security, plus take up tax reform...
Vol. 10 • August 2005 • No. 44
