Thank God for WikiLeaks. I confess, I was starting to wonder what the real Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton — the one you never get to see behind closed doors — really stood for. However, now that, thanks to WikiLeaks, I have had a chance to peruse her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks, I am more convinced than ever she can be the president the US needs today.
Seriously, those speeches are great. They show someone with a vision, a pragmatic approach to getting things done and a healthy instinct for balancing the need to strengthen our social safety nets with unleashing the US’ business class to create the growth required to sustain social programs.
So thank you, Russian President Vladimir Putin, for revealing how Clinton really hopes to govern. I just wish more of that Clinton was campaigning right now and building a mandate for what she really believes.
WikiHillary? I am with her.
Why? Let us start with what WikiLeaks says she said at Brazil’s Banco Itau event in May 2013: “I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade ... and we have to resist protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade.”
She also said: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as ‘green’ and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”
That is music to my ears. A hemisphere where nations are trading with one another, and where more people can collaborate and interact for work, study, tourism and commerce, is a region that is likely to be growing more prosperous with fewer conflicts, especially if more of that growth is based on ‘clean’ energy.
Compare our hemisphere, or the EU, or the Asian trading nations with, say, the Middle East — where the flow of trade, tourism, knowledge and labor among nations has long been restricted — and the case for Clinton’s vision becomes obvious.
The way US Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump have made trade and globalization dirty words is ridiculous. Globalization and trade have helped to bring more people out of poverty in the past 50 years than at any other time in history.
Do we need to make adjustments so the minority of the US population that is hurt by freer trade and movements of labor is compensated and better protected? You bet we do. That is called fixing a problem — not throwing out a whole system that we know from a long historical record contributes on balance to economic growth, competitiveness and more open societies.
In a speech to a Morgan Stanley group on April 18, 2013, WikiHillary praised the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which included reforming the tax code to increase investment and entrepreneurship, and raising certain taxes and trimming some spending and entitlements to make them more sustainable.
The ultimate shape of that grand bargain could take many forms, she said, but Clinton said behind closed doors: “Simpson-Bowles … put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues and we have to incentivize growth. It’s a three-part formula.”
She is right. We will never get out of this economic rut, and protect future generations, unless the business and social sectors, Democrats and Republicans, all give and get something — and that is exactly where WikiHillary was coming from.
In an October 2013 speech for Goldman Sachs, Clinton seemed to suggest the need to review the regulations imposed on banks by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Her idea was not to get rid of all of the rules, but rather to make sure they were not imposing needless burdens that limited lending to small businesses and start-ups.
As Clinton put it: “More thought has to be given to the process and transactions and regulations so that we don’t kill or maim what works, but we concentrate on the most effective way of moving forward with the brainpower and the financial power that exists here.”
Again, exactly right.
You can also find WikiHillary, or her aides, musing about a “carbon tax” and whether or not to come out in favor of it, as Sanders did. She chose not to now, probably to avoid being saddled by Republicans with calling for a new tax in the general election campaign, but I am confident she would make pricing carbon part of her climate policy.
When I read WikiHillary, I hear a smart, pragmatic, center-left politician who will be inclined to work with both the business community and Republicans to keep the US tilted toward trade expansion, entrepreneurship and global integration, while redoubling efforts to cushion workers from the downsides of these policies.
I am just sorry that Clinton’s campaign team felt she could not speak like WikiHillary to build a proper mandate for her as president. She would have gained respect for daring to speak the truth to her own constituency — and demonstrating leadership — not lost votes.
Nonetheless, thanks to WikiLeaks, I am reassured that she has the right balance of instincts on the issues I care about most. So, again, thank you, Putin, for exposing that Clinton.
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