Here’s Why Clinton Needs to Lose NAFTA : The debate was a noble effort that the Administration hopes will be remembered when it’s time to count health-care votes.

Just about everybody came out a winner in Tuesday’s Gore-Perot North American Free Trade Agreement debate. The vice president’s televised star turn pushed him up a notch in the White House hierarchy. Gore is still behind Hillary Rodham Clinton, but he definitely has Dave Gergen, the spin czar, eating his dust.

Perot is on his way down, perfecting his snarling Bob Dole imitation as he goes, but he got what he wanted--affirmation that he is the blackest of the black knights of the Legion of NAFTA Doom. Other winners include Larry King, who cements his position as the Great Communicator of ‘90s media politics. The unions win, too. Nobody thought they had this kind of clout any more. And the congressional Republicans gain stature: Most are for the treaty; nobody can blame them for gridlock.

What about President Clinton? The man who dropped the middle-class tax cut and Lani Guinier faster than you can say “I feel your pain” is getting points with the pundits for sticking with NAFTA. Has he rubbed Lane Kirkland the wrong way? Fine. Clinton, whose urge to accommodate special interests inspired Paul Tsongas to label him a Walter Mondale-style “pander bear” during the ’92 campaign, will benefit from showing a little bit of gritty independence from Big Labor.

Now all Clinton has to do is make sure that he loses the NAFTA vote in the House next week.

If Clinton really wanted NAFTA to pass, he would have debated Perot the other night. Or better yet, he would have gone on national TV--not just one cable channel--and delivered a Rooseveltian fireside chat. He did that twice on behalf of his tax increase. Clinton could have taken Perot and the protectionists head on, beginning with the words “The only thing we have to fear is fearful demagogues.”

But Clinton can’t afford to win NAFTA. He knows that the core Democratic constituencies will forgive him if they beat him. But if Clinton beats them, that’s a different story. In politics, losers are always more motivated than winners.

Of course, not everyone can be a winner. Smiles inside the Beltway are usually inversely related to the national well-being. Defeat of NAFTA may derail the Uruguay Round trade negotiations and shrink world commerce, costing millions of future American jobs. As they say in Washington, you can’t please everybody.

Clinton understands the argument for free trade, and maybe even regrets that he can’t make it more forcefully. Smart strategists know that you can’t always be on the offensive; sometimes you have to make a tactical retreat. So what if he loses NAFTA; Clinton has earned brownie points with the elites and the business community. He can spend those chits to enact something he really does care about: his health-care plan. If Clinton is really lucky, Perot and United We Stand will swell and eclipse the staid, low-tech Republicans. Wouldn’t it be nice to have two opponents in ‘96? Divide and conquer--works every time.

So Clinton is keeping his eye on the big picture--reelection. He can afford to sacrifice NAFTA. Remember Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell? No? Don’t feel bad. President Nixon appointed them to the Supreme Court in 1969 and 1970. Both were rejected by the Senate in divisive showdown votes over their ethical and racial insensitivities. Yet in 1972, Nixon was reelected, carrying 49 states. The particulars of Haynsworth and Carswell were forgotten.

If NAFTA is defeated, it will be forgotten, too.

Yet if, by some miracle of miscalculation, NAFTA passes, then Clinton really is in trouble. Every factory that closes, for whatever reason, will be a prop in anti-Clinton events sponsored by some or all of the following: the Jesse Jackson left, the Pat Buchanan right and the Ross Perot mad-as-hell middle. Such a coalition could never organize around anything positive. But in the crackpot tradition of the Anti-Masons, the Know-Nothings and the McCarthyites, if NAFTA wins, the wildest, craziest and most energetic Americans will rally around a simple message: “Remember NAFTA! Beat Clinton!”

Clinton knows this. He saw his predecessor overwhelmed by a populist explosion. Now that Clinton’s in the Oval Office, he sees no need for any more such eruptions of grass-roots anti-incumbent fervor. So Clinton will continue to take the NAFTA case to CEOs and Nobel laureates. That’s safe enough; they don’t swing any votes. Meanwhile, the opposition swarms over Capitol Hill, taking names and measuring scalps, just to make sure.