[Peace] Moyers and Chomsky

[David Green]

Tonight PBS is broadcasting a Bill Moyers examination
of the effects of NAFTA. Below is an excerpt of an
article by Noam Chomsky from 1994, "The Clinton
Vision, Part 2." The rest of the article can be found
online at zmag.org under the Chomsky Archives

1. Clinton's Bottom Line
November 17 was a grand day in the career of Bill
Clinton, the day when he proved that he is a man of
firm principle, and that his "vision" -- the term has
become a journalistic reflex -- has real substance.
"President Emerges As a Tough Fighter," the New York
Times announced on the front page the next day.
Washington correspondent R.W. Apple wrote that Clinton
had now silenced his detractors, who had scorned him
for his apparent willingness to back down on
everything he claimed to stand for: 

"Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on
homosexuals in the military, on important elements of
his economic plan [namely, the minuscule stimulative
package]; he seemed ready to compromise on all but the
most basic elements of his health-care reforms.
Critics asked whether he had a bottom line on
anything. 

On NAFTA, he did, and that question won't be asked
much for a while."1 

In short, on unimportant matters, involving nothing
more than millions of lives, Clinton is a
"pragmatist," ready to retreat. But when it comes to
responding to the calls of the big money, our hero
showed that he has backbone after all. 

The importance that the corporate world saw in the
NAFTA issue was revealed with some clarity in the
final stages. Usually, both the President and the
media try to keep their class loyalties somewhat in
the background. This time, all bars were down.
Particularly striking was the bitter attack on labor
for daring to interfere in the political process,
understood to be the domain of business power in a
well-ordered democracy. 

The logic is familiar. When ordinary people enter the
political arena, we have a "crisis of democracy";
things are OK, however, when the President is able to
"govern the country with the cooperation of a
relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and
bankers," as the Eaton Professor of the Science of
Government at Harvard (Samuel Huntington) has
explained, articulating the vision of democracy
propounded by elite opinion for hundreds of years. 

Accordingly, corporate lobbying was considered
unworthy of mention -- a reasonable decision; one also
doesn't report the air we breathe. 

President Clinton denounced the "naked pressure" and
"real roughshod, muscle-bound tactics" of organized
labor, "the raw muscle, the sort of naked pressure
that the labor forces have put on." They even resorted
to "pleading...based on friendship" and
"threatening...based on money and work in the
campaign" when they approached their elected
representatives. Never would a corporate lobbyist sink
that low; those who believe otherwise merely reveal
themselves to be "Marxists" or "conspiracy theorists,"
terms that are the cultivated equivalent of
four-letter words or a punch in the nose, a last
resort when you can't think of an argument. Front-page
stories featured the President's call to Congress "to
resist the hardball politics" of the "powerful labor
interests." Business was reeling from the onslaught,
unable to face the terror of the mob. At the outer
limits of dissent, Anthony Lewis berated the
"backward, unenlightened" labor movement for the
"crude threatening tactics" it employed to influence
Congress, motivated by "fear of change and fear of
foreigners." 

In a lead editorial the day before the vote, the Times
courageously confronted the "raw muscle," denouncing
local Democrats who oppose NAFTA in fear of "the wrath
of organized labor" with its powerful political action
committees that "contribute handsomely to their
election campaigns." A box within the editorial headed
"Labor's Money" records labor contributions to NAFTA
opponents in the New York City area -- "an unsettling
pattern," the editors observe ominously.2 

As some aggrieved representatives and others noted,
the Times did not run a box listing corporate
contributions. Nor did it list Times advertisers and
owners who support NAFTA, raising ominous questions
about their editorial support for the bill, perhaps an
instance of an "unsettling pattern." Such reactions
are not to the point, however, for several reasons.
First, information about corporate lobbyists, owners
and advertisers would be irrelevant, since conformity
of government and editorial policy to their views is
the natural order. And if the hysteria about the
improprieties of working people was a bit crass, it is
after all understandable in a moment of panic, when
the mob is practically at the gates. Furthermore,
after endless wailing about the terrifying power of
labor and the unfair uses to which it was put, the
Times did run a front-page story revealing the truth:
Michael Wines, "Off Stage, Trade Pact Lobby Had a
Star's Dressing Room." 

The corporate lobbyists, Wines reported, were "Chamber
of Commerce types, accountants, trade consultants,"
who "occupied a stately conference room on the first
floor of the Capitol, barely an elevator ride away
from the action in the House chamber," with TV sets,
cellular telephones, and other appurtenances in
abundance, and celebrities everywhere. The picture was
enough to convince a former Carter official, now a
lobbyist, that "It's going to be a blowout." A look at
labor's "raw muscle" only reinforced the conclusion:
"The boiler room for the forces opposed to the pact,
by contrast, was more of, well, a boiler room," a
"barren hearing room" far from the House debate, with
only one telephone, "basic black." "The dress was
union-label, inexpensive suits and nylon jackets
inscribed with numbers and insignias of various
locals." Wines even spoke the usually forbidden words
"class lines," referring to the "nastier and more
divisive battle" over NAFTA, unlike the "previous two
battles," which left no scars: the battle over the $19
billion stimulus (quickly lost) and the tax and
spending cuts.3 

True, the story that finally set things right was
published the day after the vote. But the newsroom is
a busy place, media savants explain, and sometimes
things fall through the cracks -- in an oddly
systematic way. 

Before the vote, it wasn't only labor, with its
awesome power, that was pummelling Congress while the
business world looked on in helpless dismay. The
morning of the vote, a front-page story in the Wall
Street Journal denounced "the muscle-flexing by the
broad antitrade coalition," which extends beyond labor
bureaucrats to "upscale environmentalists, suburban
Perot supporters and thousands of local activists
nationwide." These extremists believe that NAFTA is
designed "for the benefit of multinational
corporations. Their rhetoric is pure
down-with-the-rich populism," laced with
"conspiratorial, antielitist arguments." A pretty
scary crowd.4 

The news columns of the Journal usually try to keep a
dispassionate tone, leaving Maoist-style ranting to
the editorial and opinion pages. But in this case, the
pain was too much to bear. 



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