Clintons Stand Up For Colombia
Politics: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lent credence to her call for Colombia free trade Thursday by bringing former President Clinton to Bogota and having dinner with him. It’s time to put him in a bigger role on this.
Arriving on the third stop of her Andean tour, the secretary of state assured America’s closest Latin American ally of the administration’s trade position:
Arriving on the third stop of her Andean tour, the secretary of state assured America’s closest Latin American ally of the administration’s trade position:
“First, let me underscore President Obama’s and my commitment to the Free Trade Agreement,” she told RCN Television. “We are going to continue to work to obtain the votes in the Congress to be able to pass it. We think it’s strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States. And I return very invigorated … to begin a very intensive effort to try to obtain the votes to get the Free Trade Agreement finally ratified.”
She also made an interesting point unofficially. To demonstrate that Colombia’s cities are now safe, she unexpectedly met up with her husband in the sleek northern half of the capital for cappuccinos and then a steak dinner, a move that delighted Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who explained that it showed how his capital has been transformed over eight years from a violent hellhole into a perfectly normal city where anyone can go out to dinner.
Both deeds were the right things to say and do, given the failure of the White House and its Democratic congressional allies to pass the U.S.-Colombia free trade pact.
But this won’t happen with even the best of just words — someone needs to be there in Congress making the effort to bring in the votes. Hillary Clinton, by her statement above, showed she knows this, but Obama doesn’t seem to realize that this is what it takes and has always taken to get a treaty to pass. He still hasn’t gone to bat for this pact.
If Obama can’t do it, maybe this is a task he could ask the former president to take on.