You can go over to CNN and read about the 45 times Hillary Clinton praised the Trans-Pacific Partnership while serving as Secretary of State. For example, there’s the time in November 2012 when she made remarks in Australia:
“This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.”
Okay, so maybe that agreement didn’t ultimately build in strong enough environmental and worker protections? Could be. I don’t know.
On that same November 2012 trip, she talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Singapore:
“And with Singapore and a growing list of other countries on both sides of the Pacific, we are making progress toward finalizing a far-reaching new trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The so-called TPP will lower barriers, raise standards, and drive long-term growth across the region. It will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and establish strong protections for workers and the environment. Better jobs with higher wages and safer working conditions, including for women, migrant workers and others too often in the past excluded from the formal economy will help build Asia’s middle class and rebalance the global economy. Canada and Mexico have already joined the original TPP partners. We continue to consult with Japan. And we are offering to assist with capacity building, so that every country in ASEAN can eventually join. We welcome the interest of any nation willing to meet 21st century standards as embodied in the TPP, including China.”
Maybe those 21st century standards turned out to be more mid-20th century? Could be. I don’t know.
There’s the time in January 2013 when she spoke with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida:
“We also discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and we shared perspectives on Japan’s possible participation, because we think this holds out great economic opportunities to all participating nations.”
Maybe the great economic opportunities were a lie she was telling because it was her job to lie? Could be. I don’t know.
What’s clear is that she was working hard to promote the trade deal until her last day at the State Department. From the above comments and the other 42 examples found by CNN, it’s clear that she took her marching orders quite seriously, which I believe is to her credit. She was telling anyone who would listen that this agreement would do wonders for women and was a crucial component of our new Pacific policy.
You can make what you want of this, but she’s singing a different tune as of yesterday.
Speaking at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, as part of a two-day swing through the leadoff caucus state, Clinton said that she’s worried “about currency manipulation not being part of the agreement” and that “pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients fewer.”
“As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” Clinton said, later adding, “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set.”
I think if you’re a sophisticated person, you understand that when you serve in the president’s cabinet, you’re supposed to promote his policies. If you can’t, you resign. So, if there’s an issue with Clinton’s apparent flip-flop here, it’s less that she once sounded very much like she thought the TPP was a good idea and a critical part of our country’s foreign policy than it is that she didn’t resign in protest over its shortcomings.
More than that, though, this is the type of thing that makes people distrust politicians in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. If you’re an unsophisticated person, you expect to be able to believe that what a Secretary of State says 45 times is not the opposite of what they privately think. And if you are a sophisticated person, you know that Clinton wasn’t lying about how she felt back then. She’s lying about how she feels right now.
Either way, it’s transparent calculating opportunism, where any kind of principle is the first thing sacrificed to the political expedients of the moment.
Don’t get me wrong, Clinton isn’t alone in this. President Obama gave us all a line of bullshit on renegotiating NAFTA when he was running in the Democratic primaries in 2008. Fortunately, he didn’t do it in 10 different countries on 45 different occasions or in any considerable detail. But he still did it.
And, you know what? People didn’t like it. It made them cynical. It took away a lot of trust in the circles that care deeply about trade issues and economic dislocation.
In this case, I’ve already seen a lot Obama loyalists on Twitter treating Hillary’s turnabout as a treacherous example of personal disloyalty to the president. But the president is a sophisticated man. He’s not going to take this personally.
You shouldn’t take it personally, either. But neither should you believe it.
The main reason it matters is because you can run a lot of thirty-second ads when someone has gone on camera dozens of times and said the opposite of what they’re saying now. These don’t have to be fair or nuanced or properly contextualized thirty-second ads. They will do the trick simply by presenting two conflicting things and letting the viewer decide whether they collectively amount to someone they can’t trust.
If you want to know how Joe Biden would protect himself on TPP should he enter the race, I have just provided you with the answer. And Bernie Sanders, who won’t run negative ads, may run some kind of contrast ads, too.
Lord knows that the Republicans will use this stuff. They may even put her on a windsurfing board while they do it.
