Left and Right Converge On Economic Globalization [by Gerald Seib]
YOU'D THINK PAT Buchanan and the protesters in Washington's streets this week would feel some real bonds, given that they share a hatred for runaway economic globalization.
You would be wrong.
Consider Brendan O'Sullivan, who should be Pat Buchanan's kind of guy. He's deeply suspicious of big international financial organizations, leery of free-trade rhetoric and wary of trade deals with China. Ditto for Mr. Buchanan.
Mr. O'Sullivan feels strongly enough about all this that he traveled to Washington from Madison, Wis., this week to stand shivering in the rain and protest outside World Bank headquarters. Mr. Buchanan feels strongly enough that he left the Republican Party to carry his views into the Reform Party.
Given this harmonic convergence, Mr. O'Sullivan is thinking about supporting Mr. Buchanan for president on the Reform Party ticket, right? Not a chance. "I think basically he's a right-wing fascist," Mr. O'Sullivan declares.
There, in a nutshell, is the problem faced by Mr. Buchanan on the right and all those protesters on the left. They happen to come together to oppose the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and unfettered free-trade policies. But each side considers the other a flawed messenger.
It's trendy to say that the far right and the far left have moved so far away from the establishment on international economics that they're actually coming together. But that sounds more true than it really is. In talks with several dozen protesters on Washington's streets this week, not one volunteered praise for Mr. Buchanan. The presidential candidate of choice, for those who might vote, is the reliably leftist Ralph Nader.
IN REALITY, MR. BUCHANAN and the demonstrators may arrive at similar positions, but do so for strikingly different reasons. "Many of them are globalists and interventionists, and I'm not," Mr. Buchanan acknowledges.
Mr. Buchanan is an economic nationalist. His goal in opposing trade deals and international economic organizations is, first and foremost, to protect the well-being of American workers. He feels the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are sucking away American workers' tax dollars to bail out international bankers and line the pockets of corrupt oligarchs, so he opposes them.
The demonstrators this week oppose the World Bank and IMF as well, but more out of concern for workers internationally. They think the institutions pay too little heed to the human and environmental rights of workers in other countries as they finance the work of multinational corporations. "There are some profound differences when it comes to motivation," says Mark Stout, a Green Party member from California, who showed up at the protests wearing a Nader button.
Those differences eventually come to the surface. They lead Mr. Buchanan to oppose forgiving Third World debts, for fear the bill for unpaid debts will be shifted to American taxpayers through higher IMF and World Bank dues. The protesters, by contrast, chant for forgiving Third World debt to ease the burden of development.
SIMILARLY, MR. BUCHANAN opposes many trade deals because he thinks they put American workers at a disadvantage by allowing in imports produced by cut-rate overseas labor. The protesters oppose the same kind of trade deals, but more out of concern that they fail to help the foreign workers whose paltry wages and unsafe working conditions produce those cheap imports. Mr. Buchanan and his compatriots "have a protectionist attitude," says Amber Martin, a protester from Albany, N.Y. "Our view is that we want other countries in the world to have the same economic benefits we have in the U.S."
Sometimes, of course, there is a real convergence. Mr. Buchanan says that he had more in common with the protesters who disrupted the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle earlier this year. By opposing the WTO, he says, both he and the street protesters "were standing up for America's right to decide her own laws, and not have them revoked or rescinded by some international organization."
So both he and the protesters oppose the U.S.-China trade deal that is to open the way for China's entry into the WTO. But Mr. Buchanan does so in part because he thinks American workers will be hurt as big multinational corporations move American jobs to Chinese factories. The protesters object largely because they think Chinese workers' rights will be violated in those same factories.
And good luck trying to get Mr. Buchanan and the street people to agree on, say, immigration policy. It's cool to talk about how right and left converge in the New Economy. But so far, talk outstrips reality.