MIAMI — The presidential campaigns of Democrat Al Gore and Republican George Bush have sent out their respective representatives to offer contrasting visions
of the policies the next U.S. president should pursue in the Americas.Using the Miami Herald’s Americas Conference as their debate forum held Friday, Robert Pastor, speaking for Gore, and Congressman Lincoln
Diaz-Balart (R-FL) speaking for Bush, agreed that both candidates supported creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the target date of 2005. But they differed on which candidate has shown the most
interest in the hemisphere and which is better qualified to help the Americas strengthen democratic institutions, deepen the rule of law, and reduce high levels of poverty.
Pastor, a professor of political science at
Emory University who was director for Latin American and Caribbean Affairs on the National Security Council in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, said that creating a “hemispheric community of democracy” will
require high-level, deliberate, and sustained attention. Pastor said his candidate is best qualified to provide that.
Pastor said that Gore’s televised 1993 debate with Ross Perot on NAFTA “demonstrated his
long-standing commitment to free trade.”
NAFTA was negotiated during the presidency of the senior George Bush, but President Clinton and Gore “did the heavy lifting that secured its approval from Congress,” Pastor
said. While some argued that NAFTA would be a setback for democracy in Mexico, Pastor recalled, Gore predicted that democracy would only become stronger. What many observers viewed as the surprising victory of Mexican
President-elect Vicente Fox in July “was proof of that,” he added.
Creating the FTAA by 2005, Pastor said, will require similarly strong leadership from the next U.S. president. “I believe Al Gore has a better chance
[than Bush] of achieving an FTAA that advances our values,” he said, arguing that success will require winning the support of groups that feel disadvantaged by global trade and fear losing jobs to competition overseas.
The chances for building an FTAA, Pastor said, will be significantly better if these disaffected groups feel they have a stake in the outcome.
Gore and the Democratic Party, said Pastor, are “sensitive to the concerns
raised by both labor unions and environmentalists” and Gore is “committed to making sure those concerns are addressed.” Pastor quoted Gore as saying during his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Los
Angeles that “we must welcome and promote truly free trade, but it also must be fair trade.” Trade agreements like the FTAA must set standards to protect against abusive child labor, the exploitation of workers, and
destruction of the environment, Pastor said.
Pastor suggested that the leaders who attend the next Summit of the Americas in April in Canada might adopt a “democracy clause,” similar to the one in the Mercosur trade
agreement, that would exclude a country from the FTAA if it did not abide by democratic principles.
“But if the principle is not just rhetoric but to affect policy, we must first reach some understanding on what
constitutes a violation of the democratic process,” he said.
For his part, Diaz-Balart was highly critical of what he charged was the Clinton-Gore administration’s neglect of the Americas. During their term in office,
he said, Clinton and Gore “squandered opportunities” provided by the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush to promote the agenda of the Americas, by failing to get fast-track authority to negotiate new trade
agreements such as the FTAA.
Bush has already made clear that fast-track “will be of the highest priority for him” if he is elected president, Diaz-Balart said, adding: “I will vote to give it to him.” Bush’s Latin
American policies will be pro-trade, pro-democracy, and pro-active, he said.
The congressman said that Latin America “remains an afterthought” of current U.S. foreign policy, whereas Bush “will look south, not as an
afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of his presidency.”
Bush, he said, “is deeply concerned about problems that have grown into crises” in the Americas during the Clinton-Gore years, such as the power of
narcotics traffickers in places like Colombia. Bush, he said, believes that the future of the hemisphere lies in the creation of millions of small businesses, and will “respectfully stress with our neighbors the need to
lift the barriers of bureaucracy and over-regulation that prevents millions of people from creating small businesses.”
On Colombia, Diaz-Balart said the Clinton-Gore team shortchanged Colombian anti-drug efforts, and
organized a significant U.S. aid package only at the “eleventh hour” and “only after leaders of the Republican Congress insisted on action.”
Bush, he said, “has a vision and a strategy” for the hemisphere “to
recapture the initiative and to lead the way” for “prosperity through economic cooperation, to defend freedom, and to achieve a new solidarity” among the nations of the Americas.
