After their dramatic election sweep, the Republican leadership questions whether President Obama can move to the center as President Clinton did after his midterm election debacle. In his New York Times op ed piece, “Exporting Our Way to Stability,” Obama makes as much as a political statement as a guide for public policy aspiration. Like President Clinton’s center move on a free trade approach to international economics through NAFTA – the Mexican, Canadian, U.S. Free T rade Pact of that era – President Obama is carving a similar path with Asia: “Our government, together with American business and workers, must take steps to promote and sell our goods and services abroad – particularly in Asia. That’s how we’ll create jobs, prosperity and an economy that’s built on a stronger foundation.” He’s right, whether its extending bilateral trade agreements with India and South Korea or the broader frameworks of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Japan, and the G-20 meeing in South Korea.
To pull this off, the President will need for Asians what Bill Clinton crafted for North Americans: a common theme that all the economic partners see in their political interests. For President Clinton it was the North American hemispheric bloc that was to have been the economic counterweight to others such as the European Union. That was then. For President Obama the common theme among the United States and both APEC nations as well as the G-20 gathering in Seoul at week’s end is the challenges we all face around aging populations, particularly the connection to economic growth and fiscal sustainability.
And as international trade has moved from tariff transactions to complex discussions around the internal social and economic issues of investment, intellectual property or environment, it is entirely logical to use these frameworks to discuss the 21st century’s most compelling issue of demographic transformation characterized by aging populations. Not incidentally, the President may also find that in using the trade framework to enable innovative solutions to the economic challenges of longevity he will have earned that Nobel Prize he was give last year. Now that’s worth moving to the center.
