If you are interested in reprinting this article please contact me.
PINE BLUFFS — When the National Review placed Mitt Romney on the cover of its December 31, 2007 issue and endorsed him for President of the United States, I was excited:
Our guiding principle has always been to select most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative; a supporter of free market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on national interest.
I should have known better. After all, just a few years ago, claiming that we’d lost the battle against illegal drugs, that same conservative epistle had championed – although very low key – legalizing marijuana. Today, marijuana is still illegal, more people than ever are following Nancy Reagan’s 1984 sage advice to “just say no,” and Mitt Romney withdrew from the presidential race two days after a disastrous Super Tuesday.
So should I cancel my subscription? Well, no. The Review merely demonstrates that no one has a crystal ball when it comes to predicting future events. Even though it gets a few things wrong, it’s still the best Conservative weekly on the market.
The future IS unpredictable. Everything changes. Everyone changes. Everyone, it seems, except Bill and Hillary Clinton. Back in July 2008, feverishly campaigning in Iowa hoping to install themselves once again in the White House, the former first couple jettisoned any pretense that Hillary Rodham Clinton was seeking the presidency in her own right. Even as Donna Brazile, a Democrat Party strategist, was sounding the alarm that their old two-for-one strategy would not work again, Hillary and Bill apparently made a calculated decision to run as a co-presidency, looking to restore the Clinton years.” During their 4th of July swing through the state where the first caucus in the country was later held, Washington Post reporter, Anne Kornblut reported that in one stump speech, Mrs. Clinton “promised to restore conditions in the economy and the government to the way they were” during her husband’s administration.
Do we really want that? I don’t think soooo! In this article and my next, I’ll spell out several reasons why.
BILL CLINTON’S ILL-ADVISED PERMANENT MFN POLICY TOWARD CHINA.
Hillary Clinton’s husband’s presidency lasted – some says it was inflicted upon the American people - from January 1993 to January 2001. Despite polls showing nearly 80% of Americans opposed the move, Bill Clinton pushed Congress to grant permanent most favored nation status (MFN) to Red China. The U.S. had granted that status to all its trading partners way back in 1934. But in 1951, during the early days of the Cold War, that policy was modified to require the president to suspend the MFN status of all Sino-Soviet bloc countries. President Harry Truman did so in September 1951, after China’s reprehensible occupation of Tibet.
However, later, The Trade Act of 1974 allowed "non-market economy" countries to be granted a waiver and have their MFN status restored. Under the terms and conditions of that act, the waiver needed to be reviewed and renewed by Congress every year. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter sent to the Hill a trade agreement with China that included an MFN waiver. Normal trade status was formally restored to China on February 1, 1980.
Apparently China’s horrible record of religious persecution, forced abortion, military buildup, and arms sales to Libya, Pakistan, and later to Iraq and North Korea meant nothing to Democrats as far back as the Carter Administration, and even less to Mr. Clinton during his time in the White House. Obsessed with the idea of accessing the so-called "China market", assisting special interests in the downsizing of their U.S. labor force, and using cheap Chinese labor to manufacture products for resale in the United States, he adopted a policy of "constructive engagement" with Red China.
Prior to Clinton’s push Congressional procedure was to consider this MFN issue and vote on it annually, thereby retaining some ability to influence China’s human rights practices. But by signaling his approval to granting the Chinese permanent most favored nation status, Mr. Clinton was in effect rewarding Communist China’s terrible international and domestic record, and permitting that nation to achieve an important goal: complete and virtually unobstructed access to the huge U.S. market without having to moderate its shameful record of human rights violations or halt its reckless threats of war against America. For China, MFN status was essential to obtaining membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), which it also coveted.
Even members of Mr. Clinton’s own Party viewed his move as unwise. Senator Richard Gephardt (D-MO) and others had consistently opposed Mr. Clinton on China's most-favored-nation status, only to lose when the contentious issue of granting China its annual waiver came to a vote.
At one point during the Clinton years – in 2000 - Democrat opponents thought they had a better shot at defeating the President in this matter because of questions about his China policy. They were wrong.
The anti-MFN coalition encompassed strange bedfellows that year: liberal Democrats upset with China's human rights record and Christian conservatives critical of China's lack of religious freedom. In Congress, even some establishment Republicans who had traditionally supported MFN threatened to withhold support because of questions about Clinton's technology waivers, and questions about China's role in Pakistan's missile and nuclear programs.
Pursuing his misguided policy of “constructive engagement with the Chinese – which I wrote about extensively in my creative non-fiction novel, The China Connection (Writers Club Press, an imprint of iUniverse, Inc. Lincoln, NE. December 2003). To read an exerpt, go to http://www.saccoservices.com. Click on Books, The China Connection. To order a copy call 1-800-AUTHORS), and fueled by millions in illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese and several high-tech American corporations, Mr. Clinton mounted a ferocious campaign to beg, borrow, or buy enough Congressional votes to give the brutal Chinese dictators the victory they wanted. This, at the very time when Republican Congressional members were reminding Mr. Clinton that Congress was about to examine the question of whether national security was compromised by the Clinton Commerce Department’s transfer of missile technology to China.
These transfers prompted House GOP Conference Chairman John Boehner, a traditional MFN supporter, to say that even support for the annual extension was in peril because Clinton had not swiftly put to rest suggestions that the missile technology waivers were connected to big Democratic campaign contributions from Loral Space & Communications' chairman and CEO, Bernard Schwartz, who had a long history of complicity in Democrat Party fundraising scandals. In 1994, he gave the DNC $100,000 and visited China with President Clinton’s Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Their trip netted Loral a $250 million package that allowed China to use Chinese rockets to launch Loral's multi-million dollar satellites into space.
Undeterred by anything Mr. Boehner had to say, Mr. Clinton sent his Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, to Capitol Hill to urge renewal of China’s MFN status and its expansion to permanent status. That prompted Shengde Lian, a leader of the 1989 democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and Director of the Free China Movement to announce that the Clinton Administrations’ policy was naïve and would not bring more freedom to the Chinese people: “In the long term, to give communist China unconditional MFN is not a smart decision. There have been some improvements in human rights in China, but not because China wants to change but because of international pressure,” he said.
Well, in the end , Mr. Clinton had his way. Today, thanks to MFN status, China’s exports to the United States pay only a mere 2% tariff, while our exports to China are subject to tariffs as high as 30 to 40%.
Next time: What, exactly, was GOP Conference Chairman John Boehner talking about back in 2000, when he said that Mr. Clinton had not “swiftly put to rest suggestions that missile technology waivers were connected to big Democratic campaign contributions?” Did President Clinton sell American foreign policy to the highest bidder in return for campaign contributions? What about Loral Space & Communications, Ltd., Hughes Electronics, Inc., and the Lockheed-Martin Corporation? Did they have anything to do with illegal campaign contributions to the Democrat Party?
Anthony J. Sacco, a writer, licensed private investigator, author of two novels; The China Connection, and Little Sister Lost, and a biography, Echoes in the Wind, holds degrees from Loyola College of Maryland and the University of Maryland Law School. His articles have appeared in the Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, Voices for the Unborn, the Catholic Review, WREN Magazine and the Wyoming Catholic Register. E-mail him at AnthonyjSacco@hotmail.com and visit his blog at AnthonyjSaccosr.townhall.com. His work is also available at Triond, an Internet Magazine.