WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) -- After all the analysis about the impact of the new Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency on the campaigning, the real question is what impact Sen. John Edwards might have on future policy.
Vice presidents have to be taken seriously these days, after Al Gore and Dick Cheney have between them over the past 12 years transformed the office into a far more important executive post. What does Edwards bring to the Democratic table?
He is going to be important in a number of areas, most of which chime happily with the policy positions of his leader on the ticket, Sen. John Kerry. On the patients' bill of rights and future health reform, on education and tackling the budget deficit, on judicial appointments and social issues like abortion and gay marriage, Edwards will have little trouble echoing and reinforcing the Kerry platform.
On international affairs, there have been significant differences between the two men. Kerry is a cautious free trader, and a skeptic on too forceful an American role in the world. Edwards is known as something of a protectionist. Kerry is cool toward nation building and heady talk of an American global mission to export democracy. Edwards is notably more enthusiastic about both.
At first glance, Edwards looks like a protectionist. He has been sharply critical of the North American Free Trade Agreement and of a process of globalization that sends American jobs abroad to low-wage countries like China and India. And with the textile industry of his home state of North Carolina close to collapse, he has argued powerfully for the jobs of his constituents.
But a closer examination of his policy statements suggests that Edwards is no knee-jerk supporter of protection. On textile imports, where his constituents are at risk, he has not called for a crude imposition of quotas to protect American jobs, but for targeted measures against China.
"I am proud to be the only candidate who has already proposed to keep the textile quotas in place until China plays by the rules," he declared in a speech in Raleigh on Jan. 29. "I'm proud to have offered the most specific plan to invoke safeguards to stop China from flooding our market with textiles, to crack down on currency manipulation, and to bring new businesses venture capital to the areas that are losing jobs now."
Edwards accepts that textiles are the crucial first step on the ladder into exports and industrialization for the very poorest and least developed countries of Africa and Asia, so he is prepared to help them - so long as China lowers its own barriers to their goods. He crafted an amendment to the trade bill to insist on this. His objection to the Caribbean Free Trade Agreements is also based on China's ability to manipulate the rules and ride piggy-back into American markets by exporting through Caribbean countries.
"When all trade quotas on textiles and apparel are removed in 11 months, China is poised to dominate worldwide markets, partly due to the country's unfair trade practices," Edwards went on. "The result: millions of lost jobs around the world, both in the U.S. and in small poor countries in Africa and Latin America."
This is not classic protectionism, but a rather more thoughtful determination to ensure that China's ruthless exploitation of its own low-wage advantages does not squeeze out the exports of even poorer countries. Equally, Edwards has strongly supported the surging growth of direct foreign investment in the United States, through which foreign companies buy and build American factories and create American jobs - which is increasingly the way that the Europeans tackle the American market.
John Kerry, and most free traders, can live with that kind of "protectionism," just as most Democrats will back Edwards and Kerry on their demand to stop tax breaks for U.S. corporations shifting assets and offices overseas.
The real difference between Kerry and his running mate is to be found in Edwards's "Strategy for Freedom" speech in Raleigh on Jan. 13, which echoed President George Bush's call to modernize and democratize the Arab world.
"Promoting democracy around the world should be one of America's highest priorities -- for the sake of those who love freedom around the world, and for the sake of our own security," Edwards said. He added that this "takes more than President Bush's combination of high-minded rhetoric at home and high-handed arrogance toward our allies."
Edwards proposed a new Organization for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East (modeled on the same institution that worked reasonably well for Europe in the closing stages of the Cold War) and a new Middle East partnership program with NATO. This is pretty much what Bush ended up supporting at last month's G8 summit. Edwards also proposed that the United States should form and lead a "democracy caucus" within the United Nations that would try to block countries like Libya "from getting improper roles like heading the U.N.'s human rights committee."
"America needs the support and respect of free countries to promote freedom around the world," Edwards said. "And democrats in many parts of the world - especially the Arab world - simply do not see President Bush as a credible champion of their cause. They know the Bush administration itself has set a miserable example on civil liberties and human rights here at home; they have seen us abandon America's traditional role as a peacemaker in the Middle East."
Edwards also unveiled last December an impressive plan for a global Nuclear Compact to tackle the threat of proliferation, along with a pledge to triple spending on the existing programs to tighten controls around "loose nukes" in Russia.
Bush liked Edwards's ideas so much he stole some of them, like the call to double funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, which supports grassroots civil society programs around the world. Bush also borrowed some of the Nuclear Compact ideas for his own initiative at the G8 summit.
Kerry, who has been pretty cautious on foreign policy specifics (with the exception of solid support for Israel), could do a great deal worse that let Edwards bring some of his ideas and rhetoric to the campaign trail. There is not a vast policy difference between Kerry and Edwards on these matters, except that Edwards says it better and with the kind of belief in the fundamental decency of Americans and their democracy that carries real conviction.
Many foreign diplomats in Washington have already sent cables home warning their governments that there will not be any great change in policy if the Kerry-Edwards ticket prevails in November. But Edwards, who emerges from a study of his policy positions as a thoughtful and optimistic internationalist, would be the most persuasive salesman for U.S. foreign policy since the world sadly learned to stop taking Secretary of State Colin Powell seriously as the global voice of the Bush administration.
