Senators Obama and Clinton are competing in the Senator Edwards sweepstakes to prove who can be more hostile to free trade and critical of NAFTA - although neither has been notably critical in the past. Obama says he is going to bring jobs back to Wisconsin; Clinton is making protectionist noises to Ohio's anxious blue collar voters.
If the campaigns actually were to take foreign policy seriously rather than treat it as a pandering adjunct to domestic politics, what would be clear is that the Democrats don't have a viable international strategy to deal with economics in an age of interdependence. Why? Because they can't afford to tell the truth about our economic plight.
McCain and the Republicans have a truth of sorts: unadulterated free trade serves the interests of global business and the big corporations whom Republicans serve, so they are for it - let American workers and third world economies adjust via capitalism's notorious process of "creative destruction." Democrats respond by resorting to old-style protectionism and acting vaguely sympathetic when zealots talk about building that wall between Mexico and the United States.
Here are a half dozen truths visionary Democrats might embrace if they were not persuaded that the truth loses elections:
Truth # 1: The old manufacturing jobs aren't coming back: not ever. American labor is too expensive, the costs of safety and environmental standards too high, and the lure of cheap labor markets overseas too overpowering.
Truth # 2: Walls don't work. They not only contradict everything the open society stands for, they can't get the job done. We spent the last half century "tearing down that wall" between East and West, but now seem to think we can wall out the 12 million undocumented workers who are already here, or wall in our jobs so they won't hemorrhage to cheap labor markets where safety and environment are not concerns.
Truth # 3: The federal government has lost much of its defining sovereignty, especially when it comes to the economy. Flows of labor (the immigration crisis), capital (the north/south crisis) and goods and the plants that produce them (the job outflow crisis) are simply not subject to control by our government, and protectionism (imposing tariffs or subsidizing manufacturing) impedes market exchanges without really protecting Americans.
Truth # 4: The reality is the economy has fled the nation state box and swims freely in the anarchy of global markets, while the democratic institutions that once regulated and controlled the economy remain locked inside the nation state box. "Popular sovereignty" means that we have hitched the horse of our democracy to the cart of our sovereignty; but if the sovereign cart is broken down, the democratic horse has nothing to pull.
Truth # 5: The West and the United States underwent economic development at a huge cost in terms of child labor, unsafe conditions and environmental damage (remember Marx and Engels bemoaning the condition of the English working class?) Now we insist the developing world must pay for what we got free - rather than sharing or taking on those costs ourselves (in massive "north-south transfers of wealth").
Truth # 6: We want to let philanthropy (Bill Gates, Bill Clinton) do with charity what our democratic society and government needs to do with policy and priorities: reorder the global economy so it is subject not to our sovereignty and interests but to common democratic oversight.
So here is the real bottom line (only don't try to say it in a debate): you want change? Leadership? Vision? Then how about a new vision for democratizing globalization or globalizing democracy that puts the oversight institutions out there where the economy is -- in the global market. A new vision that recognizes that sovereignty is a dying dream but that the "free" market alternative represents a race to the bottom; a vision that refuses to limit the choice to protectionism or profits.
There is no going back, no putting the genie of global markets back inside the nation state box. But that cannot mean abdicating economics to global market anarchy or global market monopolies either. The challenge for democrats (i.e., Democrats) who care about both jobs and justice is to figure out how to maintain democracy when the "sovereignty" in "popular sovereignty" no longer has global traction.
But imagine what happens to the candidate who is truly audacious enough to say, "What stands between the United States and both prosperity and economic justice is sovereignty! We must get over our stubborn, counter-productive belief that walls, tariffs, subsidies and nationalism will do more for our interests than cooperation with others around common democratic oversight principles." This is a winning truth that can give Democrats a way around protectionism and free trade. Except it's a sure loser - all credit to the media! -- in the pandering campaign circus that currently passes for American "democracy."