Like Obama, all Asia can do is watch and wait
NEW YORK -- U.S. President Barack Obama enters a crucial few
days of his presidency this week, with his legacy and second-term agenda
threatened on three fronts -- trade, health care and foreign policy --
and his push for a new U.S. alignment with Asia all but teetering.
The sweeping U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, the economic cornerstone of Obama's announced "pivot" to Asia, appears to be on life support after his Democratic allies in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday jettisoned a key component of a bill to give the president "fast-track" authority to negotiate final trade deals. White House officials and their allies used the Sunday morning television talk-show circuit to make the case that fast-track trade authority was not dead, and that the vote could still be reversed in coming days.
Ominous silence
But ominously for Obama, the main Democrat hoping to succeed him in the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, finally broke her silence over the trade issue on Sunday when she sided with House Democrats and their leader, Nancy Pelosi. At a campaign rally in Iowa, Clinton urged Obama to negotiate to meet the concerns of his liberal critics and get the strongest possible pact for American workers. "And if we don't get it, there should be no deal," Clinton said, without specifying exactly what she would change in the agreement. "Let's take the lemons and turn it into lemonade," she urged.
Clinton spoke out after weeks of silence on whether she supports giving the president fast-track authority, having conspicuously failed to mention the trade issue as she formally launched her candidacy in a boisterous New York City rally over the weekend.
In interviews throughout Sunday, U.S. broadcast journalists repeatedly pushed Clinton's campaign advisers to say whether or not she supported giving Obama the trade authority, and repeatedly they demurred, indicating her team recognizes how polarizing the trade issue has become for the Democratic Party's liberal base.
"She wants to wait and see what the final deal is," said Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He called the Friday defeat "skirmishes around the process."
Similarly, Clinton pollster Joel Benenson explained the Friday vote to torpedo the trade deal as "inside Washington politics" and said Clinton was interested in a final pact and whether it would protect American workers and enhance national security.
The irony for Obama, as he sees his ambitious Pacific trade deal in peril, is that those hedging their support now were all at some stage key members of his administration. Clinton was his secretary of state who launched the "pivot" to Asia and began the trade talks. Podesta was Obama's chief of staff at the White House, and Benenson was the pollster whose data-driven approach helped get Obama elected.
When none of them could or would publicly back his need for fast-track authority, it signaled a significant realignment underway in the Democratic Party as the post-Obama era starts to take shape.
Shifting allegiance
The problem is partly of Obama's own making, and partly a shift in the country's political dynamic, with a resurgence of the labor-aligned left wing of the Democratic Party, which has found new enthusiasm through Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the populist politician from Massachusetts. The left has raised income inequality and economic fairness as top issues in the minds of voters, and they have, rightly or wrongly, seized on the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an example of corporate concerns trumping the needs of average people.
Obama's failing is that, despite listing the TPP as a top priority, he appeared to neglect building congressional support for the deal until the last several weeks after the anti-trade position had hardened. Obama did make a last-minute push on Friday, including a rare appearance on Capitol Hill to personally lobby for the vote, but it was seen as much too little, much too late.
Obama seems to have forgotten the old Washington axiom for dealing with the Congress -- do not wait to call members until you need them. The famously introverted president with a reputation for aloofness has never been a political back-slapper, and has not been known to invite members of Congress on his many golf outings or even over for informal meals and movie-watching at the White House as some of his predecessors did. This detachment now seems to have imperiled one of his top second-term priorities.
Fast-track trade authority is considered crucial before a final Pacific trade deal can be reached, because other countries will not negotiate with the U.S. unless they are certain the president has the power to strike the final deal.
But the pact was already in trouble in at least one area: a provision, added by the U.S. Senate, that would bar any country involved in human trafficking from being party to the agreement. Currently, the U.S. State Department gives Malaysia -- a TPP member -- low marks for the country's role in forced labor and human trafficking. The current Asian crisis over the plight of thousands of Myanmar Rohingya migrants fleeing persecution at home has cast new light on Malaysia's role in the trafficking and exploitation of Rohingya workers.
Legacy under threat
The trade deal is not the only one of Obama's legacy issues now under pressure. At some point in the next few days or weeks, the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether his health care law, his single most important domestic achievement, will be gutted when it rules whether billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies is illegal.
Also, by the end of June, U.S. negotiators must strike a final deal with Iran over its nuclear program that must then be put before a hostile Senate for a final vote.
Obama's immigration reform plans have already been blocked by the courts and are unlikely to be revived before the end of his term. Health care is in peril. The Iran deal looks problematic. And now the TPP trade pact could also fall victim to Washington political machinations and Obama's own detached style of government.
The week ahead will be crucial for many concerned parties. For Obama, the irony is that on all three fronts, events are now entirely outside his direct control. Asia, meanwhile, and its aspiring TPP signatories are on the sidelines, anxiously awaiting the outcome of this week's political maneuvering. Just like Obama, all they can do now is to watch and wait.
The sweeping U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, the economic cornerstone of Obama's announced "pivot" to Asia, appears to be on life support after his Democratic allies in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday jettisoned a key component of a bill to give the president "fast-track" authority to negotiate final trade deals. White House officials and their allies used the Sunday morning television talk-show circuit to make the case that fast-track trade authority was not dead, and that the vote could still be reversed in coming days.
Ominous silence
But ominously for Obama, the main Democrat hoping to succeed him in the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, finally broke her silence over the trade issue on Sunday when she sided with House Democrats and their leader, Nancy Pelosi. At a campaign rally in Iowa, Clinton urged Obama to negotiate to meet the concerns of his liberal critics and get the strongest possible pact for American workers. "And if we don't get it, there should be no deal," Clinton said, without specifying exactly what she would change in the agreement. "Let's take the lemons and turn it into lemonade," she urged.
Clinton spoke out after weeks of silence on whether she supports giving the president fast-track authority, having conspicuously failed to mention the trade issue as she formally launched her candidacy in a boisterous New York City rally over the weekend.
In interviews throughout Sunday, U.S. broadcast journalists repeatedly pushed Clinton's campaign advisers to say whether or not she supported giving Obama the trade authority, and repeatedly they demurred, indicating her team recognizes how polarizing the trade issue has become for the Democratic Party's liberal base.
"She wants to wait and see what the final deal is," said Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He called the Friday defeat "skirmishes around the process."
Similarly, Clinton pollster Joel Benenson explained the Friday vote to torpedo the trade deal as "inside Washington politics" and said Clinton was interested in a final pact and whether it would protect American workers and enhance national security.
The irony for Obama, as he sees his ambitious Pacific trade deal in peril, is that those hedging their support now were all at some stage key members of his administration. Clinton was his secretary of state who launched the "pivot" to Asia and began the trade talks. Podesta was Obama's chief of staff at the White House, and Benenson was the pollster whose data-driven approach helped get Obama elected.
When none of them could or would publicly back his need for fast-track authority, it signaled a significant realignment underway in the Democratic Party as the post-Obama era starts to take shape.
Shifting allegiance
The problem is partly of Obama's own making, and partly a shift in the country's political dynamic, with a resurgence of the labor-aligned left wing of the Democratic Party, which has found new enthusiasm through Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the populist politician from Massachusetts. The left has raised income inequality and economic fairness as top issues in the minds of voters, and they have, rightly or wrongly, seized on the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an example of corporate concerns trumping the needs of average people.
Obama's failing is that, despite listing the TPP as a top priority, he appeared to neglect building congressional support for the deal until the last several weeks after the anti-trade position had hardened. Obama did make a last-minute push on Friday, including a rare appearance on Capitol Hill to personally lobby for the vote, but it was seen as much too little, much too late.
Obama seems to have forgotten the old Washington axiom for dealing with the Congress -- do not wait to call members until you need them. The famously introverted president with a reputation for aloofness has never been a political back-slapper, and has not been known to invite members of Congress on his many golf outings or even over for informal meals and movie-watching at the White House as some of his predecessors did. This detachment now seems to have imperiled one of his top second-term priorities.
Fast-track trade authority is considered crucial before a final Pacific trade deal can be reached, because other countries will not negotiate with the U.S. unless they are certain the president has the power to strike the final deal.
But the pact was already in trouble in at least one area: a provision, added by the U.S. Senate, that would bar any country involved in human trafficking from being party to the agreement. Currently, the U.S. State Department gives Malaysia -- a TPP member -- low marks for the country's role in forced labor and human trafficking. The current Asian crisis over the plight of thousands of Myanmar Rohingya migrants fleeing persecution at home has cast new light on Malaysia's role in the trafficking and exploitation of Rohingya workers.
Legacy under threat
The trade deal is not the only one of Obama's legacy issues now under pressure. At some point in the next few days or weeks, the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether his health care law, his single most important domestic achievement, will be gutted when it rules whether billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies is illegal.
Also, by the end of June, U.S. negotiators must strike a final deal with Iran over its nuclear program that must then be put before a hostile Senate for a final vote.
Obama's immigration reform plans have already been blocked by the courts and are unlikely to be revived before the end of his term. Health care is in peril. The Iran deal looks problematic. And now the TPP trade pact could also fall victim to Washington political machinations and Obama's own detached style of government.
The week ahead will be crucial for many concerned parties. For Obama, the irony is that on all three fronts, events are now entirely outside his direct control. Asia, meanwhile, and its aspiring TPP signatories are on the sidelines, anxiously awaiting the outcome of this week's political maneuvering. Just like Obama, all they can do now is to watch and wait.
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