Democrats Lack World Policy Debate

Remember when the Democrats really argued about foreign policy?

When the great divisive issues of each era--Vietnam, the Cold War, the defense budget--were fought out in the hawk-and-dove battles within the Democratic Party? When Democratic presidential candidates, ranging from Henry Wallace to Gene McCarthy to Scoop Jackson, offered dramatically different views of the world than whoever occupied the White House?

If you’re looking for that sort of debate between the Democrats in the current presidential campaign, forget it.

Bill Bradley made his first campaign foray into the field of foreign policy Monday and, while he garnered a few headlines, he did remarkably little to distinguish himself from Vice President Al Gore.

The truth is that on the two foreign-policy issues that seem to arouse the greatest passions today, trade and China, there seem to be more differences among the Republican and Reform Party presidential candidates than the Democrats.

One of the hallmarks of the Clinton administration’s foreign policy has been its drive for international trade agreements, from the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 to the recent deal for China’s entry into the world trading system.

Gore represents a continuation of these policies, and Bradley is a free-trader, too. In his campaign appearance Monday, Bradley extolled the virtues of open markets, saying that the benefits of free trade greatly outweighed the costs.

Out on the streets of Seattle this week, protest groups are attacking the power of the World Trade Organization, charging that globalization has had harmful effects and needs to be brought under control.

Prominent among these protesters are the AFL-CIO and environmental groups, both core Democratic constituencies. And yet, ironically, the furor embodied in the Seattle protests has been shut out entirely from the Democratic presidential campaign. You can hear the echoes more from Gary Bauer or Pat Buchanan than you can from any Democrat.

“The progressive struggle of the next decade is over how you get rules to regulate the global economy,” says Robert L. Borosage of the left-leaning Campaign for America’s Future. “The fact that this issue is not even a matter of discussion for the Democrats is tragic and a great disservice to the country.”

In his remarks Monday, Bradley did indeed voice a few gentle disagreements with the Clinton administration. But he proposed nothing more than a bit of tinkering with current foreign policy.

He suggested vaguely that he would be more reluctant to dispatch U.S. troops overseas on humanitarian missions. Yet he didn’t cite any specific case (Somalia? Kosovo?) where he opposed a military intervention by the Clinton administration.

So, too, Bradley mused that American policymakers missed an opportunity in Russia by pushing for economic reform after the Soviet collapse rather than concentrating on nuclear and security issues. But one could easily have imagined his making the reverse criticism, if the United States had failed to push for economic changes in Russia.

Exactly how the Democratic Party has produced two presidential candidates so similar in foreign-policy outlook, so soberly establishment-minded and so impervious to populism, is a puzzle.

Some suggest the party has become more oriented toward business, which provides much of the money candidates need to finance their campaigns.

If that is a factor, it can’t be the only one. Republican candidates work under the same campaign finance rules as the Democrats. Yet they also manage to produce candidates with a greater range of views.

Maybe the answer lies in the realm of psychology. Both Gore and Bradley came of age in the Vietnam War era, when the Democrats were bitterly divided on foreign policy. By this analysis, the two Democratic candidates act like children of squabbling parents: They try to avoid controversy.

Or perhaps the answer lies in the peculiar circumstances of the current campaign: The Democratic Party seems to care at least as much about regaining Congress as about retaining the White House.

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, a past spokesman for labor-oriented Democrats, chose not to run for president against Gore, largely because of his desire to concentrate on the congressional campaign and his hopes of becoming the new House speaker.

So, too, the AFL-CIO may be angry with the administration’s trade policies, but it has muted its criticisms and endorsed Gore for president in hopes that the Democrats can capture both the White House and Congress next year.

In the end, Bradley has no strong need to come up with a foreign-policy issue against Gore. He seems to be calculating that if he and the vice president are not too far apart on questions of substance, then his own personal popularity and the public desire for a change from the Clinton administration can propel him to the Democratic nomination.

Maybe as the campaign reaches its peak early next year, Bradley and Gore will find some big foreign-policy question on which they intensely disagree. So far, they haven’t. On the streets of Seattle, the trade issue has brought out the tear gas. But in the Democratic presidential campaign, tranquillity reigns.