Perot May Be a Pox on Both Parties’ Houses : If he brings down NAFTA, he’ll doom Clinton and have a claim on the GOP ticket in ’96.

When deciding how to vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement, members of Congress of both parties should think about this: Do Republicans want their leader to be Ross Perot? Do Democrats want to be more identified than they already are with the AFL-CIO?

As the leading opponents of NAFTA, Perot and organized labor will be the primary political beneficiaries of its defeat, and that spells disaster for both parties.

Representing higher taxes and protectionism, Perot is poison for the GOP. And that’s why most Republican leaders were dismayed late last week when President Clinton elevated Perot’s stature by offering to have Vice President Al Gore debate him.

The White House evidently decided to risk a debate with Perot because it believed something dramatic was necessary to keep Democrats who are terrorized by the AFL-CIO from joining the opposition, and--if Perot could be discredited--to embolden more Republicans to vote with Clinton.

If Perot beats Gore tonight--and Republicans fear that he might, at least in the public’s mind--and ultimately contributes to a NAFTA defeat, that would make him a major contender for the GOP nomination in 1996. He might not win, but he would be the well-financed centerpiece of GOP primary action, drowning out other candidates’ attacks on Clinton. If he won the nomination, his quirkiness would likely cost him the election. And if he ran as an independent, he would split the anti-Clinton vote, dooming the GOP candidate.

On the Democratic side, last week’s election results probably hurt NAFTA by showing President Clinton as politically weak, reducing his persuasive powers and making Democrats more dependent than ever on the AFL-CIO, which has made NAFTA opposition a litmus test of support.

But NAFTA’s defeat would foretell long-term disaster for the Democrats, because the deeper message of the Nov. 2 elections is the same one that voters have delivered to the Democratic Party again and again: They are fed up with welfare liberals and their high taxes, big bureaucracies and fealty to organized labor.

New York Mayor David Dinkins and New Jersey Gov. James Florio were union-endorsed “old Democrats,” though Florio attempted to alter his image by getting tough on welfare and crime.

Voters in the rest of the country know, even if New York Democrats do not, that one reason New York City is seemingly ungovernable is that its machinery, public and private, is clogged by outdated, expensive union rules and corruption.

Even though it was not an issue in the campaigns, it’s no accident that both Florio and Dinkins loyally hewed to the AFL-CIO line on NAFTA. Florio was one of only two governors in the nation opposed to NAFTA--the other being Virginia’s Douglas Wilder, whose record also was repudiated by the voters.

The New York-New Jersey results square with other recent outcomes, such as Republican Richard Riordan’s defeat of traditional Democrat Michael Woo in Los Angeles and Wall Street Republican Brett Schundler’s election as mayor of Jersey City, N.J.

These 1993 elections are part of a 25-year pattern of old-liberal losses at the national level that supposedly was broken in 1992 with the election of “new Democrat” Bill Clinton. A strong case can be made that Clinton is a weak President right now precisely because he has wavered in the troglodyte-Democrat direction on issues other than NAFTA.

Even though unions now represent only 13% of American workers and have been a waning force in politics as more Americans become suburbanites, a union victory on NAFTA will undoubtedly embolden the AFL-CIO to make yet more demands on Democrats, especially in a hopeless endeavor to seal American markets from foreign competition.

If NAFTA fails, it is almost certain that the Uruguay Round of GATT will fail as well, resulting in a worldwide rise in protectionism, diminished economic activity in an already recession-ridden global economy and a decline in U.S. exports and growth.

As a result, the AFL-CIO, in the name of saving jobs, will actually cost jobs--including those of Democrats in Congress and the occupant of the White House.

What a prospect for 1996: On the Democratic side, Clinton, carrying the burden of a recession and the loss of world economic leadership. And on the Republican side, Perot, blaming America’s problems on treason by foreign lobbyists.

Congress can avoid this nightmare: Pass NAFTA.