As the House sets up to vote on fast-track authority for the TPP, I can't help but dwell on the reservations we have kinda always had about TPP.
Oh, but let's remember, President Obama has assured us that TPP is not as bad as we think it is.
"When you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong."
Don't get me wrong. I am about as big an Obama supporter as one could be. He has been a great driver of American diplomacy in the world, even though there have been many setbacks as well. And, thanks to many of the policies he has pushed through and overall supports, the economy is much stronger than it has been in years, even though someone like me would have liked to have seen more of that recovery in the hands of the middle and lower classes, rather than Wall Street investors.
So, I am not about to take up the notion that Obama's bad policy decisions out-weigh the good. Overall, I still think he has been one of the greatest Presidents any of us may see in our lifetimes, though I will admit, my lifetime is fairly short compared to many others here, so maybe that's just me.
But, that also doesn't mean that we can ever possibly ignore all the times Obama has been wrong, and how much those times he has been wrong have cost us.
There have been other times when President Obama was confident in some regard, and it turned out to not be the case.
Of course, most of remember how the beginning years of Obama's Presidency started out. A lot of idealistic rhetoric about bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle. All of this, we are lead to believe, is meant to build up the trust between the White House and Republicans. Yet, what did that really earn him, in terms of Republican cooperation, in terms of allaying Republican obstructionism? Don't ask me, but one wonders if he really would have gotten any less accomplished if he had simply been more resolute toward the Republicans, kinda like how he is now.
It's really only very recently that he has learned from his past mistakes. Ever the prgamatist, Obama assured us that past budget negotiations could be worked out, so long as both sides were willing to compromise. Well, that never seemed to work out with this Congress.
Much of the bailout of the financial sector was negotiated well before Obama moved into the White House. Yet it was Obama who assured us that bailing out the banks was an important step that helped with the recovery. However, while the banks have certainly been helped by the bailout - one is left to surmise that goes toward alleviating the suffering of Americans as well - the banks certainly have not learned from their past mistakes. If anything, they almost seem more cavalier in much of the same shady practices that culminated in the last recession. So, we are assured that bailing out the banks was a good thing, but if that is at least partly measured in how many steps we have taken to ensure a similar result does not occur again, how can we be so sure?
President Obama, though some may debate how much of a role he actually played, helped engineer the Budget Control Act that led to the Sequester. Obama was confident, assured us that Congress would be able to come to a resolution before the Sequester came into effect. Congressional Republicans would not be so foolish, he assured us, to allow the Sequester to happen. Otherwise, he would not have agreed to its implementation in the first place, right? Yet, here we are, four years after the Sequester was proposed, two years after it came into effect, in all that time we have not been able to come to a resolution, and so we are still wrangling with its aftermath.
Overall, there have been many times that, there were a lot of things up in the air, and, while President Obama was sometimes on the wrong side of an issue, sometimes on the right, at all times, he laid his case out before us, so that we could see for ourselves what evidence he was using to make his decisions. In this regard, he certainly deserves far more credit than his predecessor, "The Decider." Yet on this one issue, he chooses to forego this reputation he has worked so hard to build, to use rational analysis and open channels to develop his policies and allow them to evolve. This one time, he chooses to act more like a Decider and less like the 50-dimensional chess grand master that we have come to know, and share our successes and defeats with. So, why are we supposed to be OK with that?
So here we are now with TPP. Obama assures us that the TPP will do all these amazing things, such as include stronger worker and environmental protections. Nevermind the fact that past trade deals have been predominantly negative in regards to these.
Obama assures us that it's a regular free-trade deal. Nevermind the fact that despite repeated demands to see the actual text, they continue to keep it secret. One wonders if there has ever been any other policy pushed by the Obama administration where they have been just as secretive while also maintaining all the benefits the policy is meant to include.
President Obama, you have been on the right side of a lot of issues, probably more than you get credit for. But it doesn't take a mind-reader to recognize how your actions do not match your claims. If the TPP is as great as you say it is, why not present the evidence so that the public can come to that conclusion ourselves? If the TPP is so great, why does it have you on the same side as Republicans, while the majority of Democrats are against?
And why, after all is said and done, if we are supposed to support the TPP, that we are just supposed to go along with it, just because you say so? When has that ever been the case?
In the entirety of this writing I have mostly been critical of the Obama administration, and its handling of the TPP. But, this is also directed at Democrats in Congress who are still mulling over whether or not to support it. I think for the most part, the majority of parties involved realize where the TPP really stands in relation to Democratic Party values, at least as they are ostensibly held.
But it's more than just the declared values. It is the implication of how matters of authority are treated.
If we, the voters, are simply supposed to take the word of our authorities that the TPP is good, without any form of hard evidence, isn't that, ultimately, the true reflection of how they expect us to be governed?
As members of the Democratic Party, is that really all that we stand for?