COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN : Don’t Expect Clinton to Fix NAFTA’s Flaws : Bipartisan support of any deal is always a clue that the fix is in to shut the people out.

Really big decisions about the nation’s economic destiny are considered much too important to run the risk of any popular, democratic input. When you see the word bipartisan, know that the fix is in and democracy out of the loop.

Take monetary policy. In the first presidential debate, Sander Vanocur asked Bill Clinton how he proposed to deal with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, a man with more power over the economy than the President, yet accountable to no one.

Clinton hastened to assure the vast television audience that he had no problem with the Fed. President Bush and Ross Perot chorused agreement that there be “separation” between the Federal Reserve and elected government.

That was it. Nothing more about Alan Greenspan, the present chairman of the Fed; nothing about the impending banking crisis. No one could find room for a harsh word about Greenspan, appointed by Reagan in 1987 and distinguished since 1990 by his spectacularly inaccurate and frequently repeated predictions before Congress that economic recovery was under way.

So much for Fed-bashing, which used to be a decent national sport. If you can’t beat up on Greenspan, a fanatic follower of Ayn Rand, what can you do, other than admit that the people are the servants of the Fed, rather than the other way around?

Here’s another area where the fix is in. America is on the edge of a free trade treaty with Mexico, following an earlier one with Canada. With democratic procedures and sovereignty annulled, workers in all three countries will be locked into a downward spiral of low-wage, low-skill jobs, with uninhibited movement of capital and a ratcheting down of social welfare provisions and environmental standards.

Elaborate mechanisms have been devised to minimize any popular input and circumvent the democratic roadblocks that could be thrown up in the path of this outrageous agreement. The unions’ Labor Advisory Committee, which has a congressional mandate to review trade matters, was only given a complete draft of the North American Free Trade Agreement provisions on Sept. 8, nearly a month after agreement was announced.

So far as I know, the Labor Advisory Committee’s report, issued Sept. 16, got no attention in the press.

The committee put the issues well. “The central objective of the NAFTA is providing security for private investment and reducing the role of government in regulating or directing that investment to promote the public interest.” But the detailed scrutiny that accompanied this verdict will be shoved peremptorily aside. The agreement is to be raced on its undemocratic way through Congress on the notorious “fast track,” which permits no amendment, merely an up-or-down simple majority vote by both houses of Congress within 90 days of the introduction of enabling legislation.

Here’s where bipartisan finesse has been at its most elegant in the presidential campaign. Of the two realistic candidates for the White House, Bush is of course in favor of the agreement and its “fast track” passage. So is Clinton, even though you have to read his lips very carefully.

Clinton, as a Democratic candidate avowedly sensitive to business, has always been for fast-track passage. Even in the wake of the Agency for International Development disclosures at the end of September, which highlighted the way the U.S. government finances job flight to cheap, terrorized labor in Central America, Clinton stayed with that position, reiterating his support for NAFTA.

Being no fool and needing blue-collar support, Clinton, after prolonged shilly-shallying, now says the pact has “serious omissions” and promises that as President he would ask Congress to supplement the trade deal by passing legislation to safeguard the environment.

But NAFTA’s whole purpose is precisely to lower costs of production so that ultimately U.S. wages and environmental enforcement slide down to meet those of Mexico. To oppose this intent is to oppose the agreement. Both Canada and Mexico have said the agreement is a done deal, and that direct or indirect changes are impermissible.

As president, Clinton could not deliver on his reassurances to labor unless he urged Congress to scrap the agreement and told his trade negotiators to start all over again. But Clinton has refused to say any such thing.

With such unanimity at the top of the ticket, democracy will have to wait till after the election, when Congress gets its chance at last, in the 90 meager days that the engineers of “bipartisanship” thought it necessary to allocate to this momentous national issue.