Horse-Trading: A Time-Honored Tradition--so Ignore Ross Perot!

It was hard to decide which opponents of the North American Free Trade agreement deserve the hypocrisy award the most--but two managed to stand out.

What a sight. There was li’l old Ross Perot and big bad organized labor on the steps of the Capitol, railing against President Bill Clinton’s horse-trading for NAFTA votes. Old Ross went so far as to call it criminal.

What’s criminal is not a President doing his job but the hypocrisy of the anti-NAFTA forces in this whole debate. Few among them have not cut deals over the years to secure congressional support for pet projects. Perot and labor included. The truth is there hasn’t been a major piece of legislation or government treaty since the beginning of the Republic that hasn’t involved horse-trading of one kind or another.

Before we look at the history of Washington’s second oldest profession--i.e., horse-trading--let’s talk a little hypocrisy. On those Capitol steps stood Perot, the man who made his fortune processing government checks. The same Perot who, in 1975, sought from the House Ways and Means Committee a tax break that would have netted him $15 million. The amendment incorporating the benefit was passed by the committee--though it was ultimately neutralized on the floor of the House.

And then there is organized labor--for many years the largest source of campaign contributions to Democratic members of the House and Senate. It is a little disingenuous to accuse Clinton of buying votes when many labor leaders threatened to withhold money and openly oppose the very Democrats they had long supported if those members dared to support NAFTA.

Has labor considered there is a full agenda of issues after NAFTA and what these implied threats may produce? For example, a critical labor bill on outlawing illegal hiring of striker replacement workers will be before the Congress soon. Having threatened potential support of that legislation over NAFTA, I wonder what kind of reception labor will get when they ask for support?

But back to horse-trading--and I mean way back, to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. After a great debate over slavery, the ratification of the Constitution was in serious jeopardy because Southern states were withholding support. They wanted more representation in the new Congress. So a deal, called the Three-Fifths Compromise, was struck. To increase Southern membership in Congress, Northern delegates agreed to count three-fifths of each slave to add to the population of the Southern slave states--thereby increasing representation in the House from the region.

And so it has gone throughout the history of the Republic--when politicians needed to accomplish significant change, either through legislation or agreement, deals were cut. From constitutions to construction, from the great federal highway system to rural electrification, from Head Start to college loans, from voting rights to open housing, horse-trading and deals were essential.

Anyone who believes that border and Southern support for the Voting Rights and Fair Housing Acts came without a price are deluding themselves. It would be nice to think that congressional supporters of these initiatives did so out of high-minded principles--but the reality is you may be driving over a bridge right now without whose steel and cement the Voting Rights Act may never have become law.

And the art of deal making crosses party lines. Lyndon B. Johnson is often cited as the Democrats’ greatest wheeler-dealer, but don’t think for a moment that Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted Social Security without cutting many a deal. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, probably the best deal cutter in modern Republican history, isn’t a match for Richard M. Nixon, who was a master in cutting White House deals to secure congressional support for his legislative agenda. When Nixon persuaded the Senate to uphold his deployment plan for the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, in 1969, he made many deals to gain support, often promising to build certain facilities in specific states. The treaty ultimately passed by one vote.

As to my own experience, I remember two vivid examples. In 1978, I led the Carter Administration’s effort to pass the Panama Canal Treaty in the Senate. It required 67 votes, and we weren’t even close. The last two months of that battle saw the White House adding endless conditions and reservations to the treaty to satisfy parochial concerns of particular senators. (Sounds quite a lot like what Clinton has done with NAFTA on rice, wheat, citrus, sugar and on and on.) Without our changes to the Panama Canal Treaty--and Clinton’s to NAFTA--we never could have passed the treaty.

The changes to the treaty weren’t all. We negotiated some pretty significant deals to secure Senate approval that had nothing to do with the treaty. I remember specifically the promise to redeploy some battleships and to negotiate the purchase of an awful lot of copper by the government that the government didn’t need.

What amazes me about Clinton and NAFTA is how little of this kind of horse-trading has taken place. The overwhelming evidence is Clinton traded product concessions, mostly agricultural, that were embodied in the agreement, but traded not a single bridge or highway. Rather than being chastised for horse-trading, he should be congratulated for not giving away the store.

My other fond memory of horse-trading was when I was lobbying for the sale of advanced warning aircraft (AWACS) to the Saudis on behalf of President Jimmy Carter. Supporters of Israel, particularly in the Senate, went nuts. Hours of rational discussion about the merits of the sale went nowhere. So how did the sale go through? Partly because we agreed to sell 15 F-15s to Israel. Ah, the art of a deal.

And so Clinton is not the first and certainly won’t be the last President who will horse-trade for votes on important legislative issues. The only difference between Clinton today and the Founding Fathers is that his deals are subjected to constant media scrutiny and the rantings of people like Perot.

I wonder what the self-righteous tirades of Perot would have done to Johnson in his courageous deal making to bring about the civil-rights legislation of the mid-1960s. I wonder how Johnson could have operated with a press corps investigating every trade-off he made with Southern members of Congress to secure their votes.

So, as we put all this self-righteous blather from Perot and the media behind us, don’t for a minute think that someplace down the road, probably on health care, horse-trading won’t be essential. Bold new initiatives require old-fashioned deals. We cannot afford to be selective in our criticism of horse-trading on a particular bill when we would be happy to see horse-trading occur to pass something we favor.

Horse-trading is alive and well in Washington--and that’s good for the Republic. Pack up and go home, Ross.