There have been some shots taken recently against Terry McAuliffe - and also, de facto, against Bill Clinton and Al Gore - over the issue of NAFTA. This got me thinking about the history of NAFTA, so I went back to see who had voted "yea" on the treaty (the final vote in the Senate was 61-38, and in the House it was 234-200).In the US Senate, we had people voting for NAFTA like: Joe Biden, Bill Bradley, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Carol Moseley-Braun, and Chuck Robb. Not exactly a bunch of arch conservatives there (note: Sen. John Warner voted "aye" as well). Notable "nays" included Senators on the right (e.g., Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond) and also on the left (Russ Feingold, Paul Wellstone). A mixed bag, in other words.
In the House, notable "aye" votes included Jim Moran and Nancy Pelosi. Notable "nays" included Rick Boucher, Leslie Byrne, and Bobby Scott.
We also had Al Gore making the case for NAFTA against Ross Perot, who argued against it, in a famous debate on CNN's Larry King Live.
The point is simply that, on NAFTA, we had liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, good people and bad people, on both sides of the issue. Clearly, NAFTA was not a open-and-shut case, at least not at the time. In fact, even now, Barack Obama is saying he will not renegotiate NAFTA, but instead will work to "strengthen provisions" of the pact. Perhaps that's because NAFTA is a mixed bag, with both good aspects and bad aspects. Now, personally, I'd probably lean towards renegotiating it, given that I support strong provisions for labor, human rights and the environment in our trade treaties. But I'm not going to say that those who are against renegotiating NAFTA are bad people or personally led to the loss of jobs in Danville (or wherever). That's a wild oversimplification of a complex issue, designed to stir up anger as opposed to shed light on the subject.
The question is whether it's appropriate, in the Virginia governor's race, to be raising NAFTA as a criticism of Terry McAuliffe, considering that: a) many good Democrats and progressives supported, and still support, NAFTA; b) Terr has never been in the House or Senate and therefore has never voted on NAFTA; c) Terry has frequently voiced concerns about the implementation of NAFTA and other free trade agreements and their impact on American workers; d) Terry has frequently emphasized the need to reevaluate and renegotiate trade agreements to better protect American workers; and e) Terry said in October 2003 that "when we negotiate these trade agreements, we've got to do them in a manner so that the workers here in the United States of America are protected"?
To me, as important an issue as trade is, it deserves a serious debate on the merits, not populist rhetoric in the midst of a heated political campaign. Specifically, I fail to see how it's at all appropriate to take shots at Terry McAuliffe on NAFTA, given points "a" through "e" above.
