Jens Laurson And George Pieler
5 December 2008
opinion
Johannesburg — US PRESIDENT George Bush spoke eloquently for open markets and free trade at the Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Washington, and again at a meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec), which even endorsed his goal of reviving the Doha trade talks by year end.
Yet his voice did not resonate. Deeply unpopular at home and abroad, a "lame duck" president when all eyes have turned to his overhyped successor, Bush is not who world leaders turn to for answers to the mounting financial crises; they blame Bush's America as its cause.
They would do well to listen, though. Here Bush's advice and policy stance is the only right one, and his words of warning might be the most pertinent, the most needed, of his presidency.
Unfortunately, despite eloquent antiprotectionist rhetoric from both the G-20 and Apec, most likely Bush will remain unheard or at least unheeded, in what is the continuing tragedy of his presidency -- he is ineffectual or ignored on his bona-fide good policies and proposals because he spent all his political capital forcing through or defending bad (or at the very least "controversial") ones.
Free trade, lest we forget, is the foundation of that global growth we are so desperately trying to keep alive.
Trade is a pacifying, civilising, and anti-inflationary force, critical to foreign policy goals such as combating Islamist extremism as well as raising the developing world out of poverty.
To his great credit, Bush kept fighting for the Doha round of trade-opening measures, bilateral free-trade agreements (most recently Peru, the host for Apec), openness to most immigration (notwithstanding post-September 11 security issues), as well as reasonable transparency in vetting foreign investment in the US without impeding the flow of capital.
But taking the right position is only half the story.
The reason Bush can't exit by rallying his peers to the cause of market capitalism is that he himself never made that cause an overriding priority for his administration. The war on terror -- or rather on al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein -- commanded all Bush's political capital.
In battle with Congress on so many fronts, from executive privilege to
troop-withdrawal timetables to detention measures, Bush simply had no political reserves to draw on in fighting for the cause of free markets.
This matters, because markets are under increasing attack.
The post-Seattle wave of antiglobalisation sentiment has hardened into a permanent network of global-sceptic nongovernmental organisations.
Intransigence from western agriculture interests and growing boldness from emerging major powers such as China and Brazil tanked the Doha trade round.
Add to the mix the "pop nativism" á la Lou Dobbs spreading through US culture (and Congress), and the situation really demanded an aggressive political and public-relations response. It never got that from the Bush administration, despite noble efforts on issues such as the Peru free-trade agreement.
It is fair to say that no administration and no president can be held responsible for what didn't happen on their watch. But when a president truly seems to understand the stakes for the world in free trade and free markets, he may be assigned some responsibility if he fails to deploy the political resources needed to vindicate economic freedom.
This president, determined to win the political battle over the Iraq war, left one of the key defences of western civilisation unguarded.
Thus his ex-post-facto free-trade rallying cry, admirable in itself, has no historical resonance.
Imagine if Bush had gone into the history books as the great free-trader of the past decades -- lifting people out of poverty at home, across Africa, Asia, the Americas and making the US more resilient (though not immune, of course) against economic downturns and recessions.
Instead, he is known as the president of Hurricane Katrina, warrantless wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay, the inflation of "executive privilege" and blurring the lines between wartime and peacetime in terms of detention laws .
That first President Bush could have spoken with great moral authority in persuading our market allies to safeguard economic freedom as we grapple with the financial meltdown.
If domestic and foreign leaders now, against the odds, muster the sense to follow the advice the real President Bush is pressing on the world, his legacy won't radically change. But it could save Bush from adding "Cassandra" to his political epitaph and the world from even harder times to come.
Laurson is editor-in-chief of the International Affairs Forum. Pieler is senior fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation.
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