I was watching former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers last night on PBS, and something he said stopped me cold.
“How did we get to a place where we have to buy all of this equipment from China?”, he asked, without a trace of irony.
The point of this post is not to pick on Summers. Would that we had him in office today. Nonetheless, I was stunned to hear those words come out of his mouth.
Why?
Because I was in DC for two stints, the Spring of 1986, and 1990-1993. I met then Rep. Barbara Boxer at an intern event. She spoke about the leadership of Nancy Pelosi regarding China. What was she talking about?
It has largely been forgotten, but Nancy Pelosi was on a mission in the 1980’s. What was it? She was determined to stop the headlong rush to expand the opening to China started by Richard Nixon in the 1970’s. This was her single issue. The Reagan administration had expanded the policy of opening China to the west, to endless approval and acclaim in official Washington, with the exception of a few anti-communist diehards on the right, and a significant faction then-considered to be on the far left of the Democratic Party.
What was the issue? Human rights. Nancy Pelosi was determined to insist that we use the then-tremendous American economic leverage to make improvements in political and personal rights in China a strong condition of any further increase in trade and American investment. She also agreed with those who saw the gold rush as having significant long term risks to our own economy, including the erosion of our own manufacturing base and the undermining of American wages (although she was always very open to free trade). She put all of her chips on this issue.
She lost.
She lost fully and finally not until the 1990’s, when Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary sided with the pro-China lobby. So my ears stung to hear that same official citing with wonder how it could be that we no longer manufacture the life-saving masks that our health heroes so badly need today.
Few seem to remember this lost crusade by Pelosi, least of all today’s lazy critics on the left, who blithely call her “The Establishment”, totally oblivious to the background and commitment of the Speaker to human rights. (Although with the steady and strong leadership she has shown this past year, there seems to be an increasing if begrudging respect for Pelosi now on the left.)
True enough, the practical politician that she is, she picked herself up, dusted herself off, and lived to fight – and win – another day. More than one.
But this is who Nancy Pelosi is. And I, for one, wish we had listened to her then.
To this day it frosts me that China did not suffer more diplomatic consequences for what happened in Tiannamen Square in 1989.
Me too, Christopher. And what is happening today in Xinjiang to the Muslim Uigurs is an even more stunning and grotesque violation of human rights. We will someday look back on this time and marvel at our own silence.
I don’t see how anyone who was paying attention to any of the following can marvel at our own silence:
1. Our illegal acts during the entire Vietnam War, including but not limited to the Tonkin Gulf incident, the bombing of Laos, the compelling evidence of widespread war crimes, and so on.
2. Our eagerness to bury the full scope of the Nixon administration abuses of power discovered during the Watergate investigation.
3. Our interventions in Central America for most of the last two centuries
4. The collusion of the Ronald Reagan campaign with Iranian hostage-takers in 1980.
5. The behavior of all participants in the Iran Contra scandal — significant portions of which were almost surely the fulfillment of promises made to Iran (see 4 above).
6. Our treatment of Muslim Americans after 9/11
7. Our illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and our crimes against humanity done on orders from the White House during that time
8. The compelling evidence of venal corruption during and after the failed 2003 Iraq invasion
My recollection is that whenever events force us to make an important choice between “moral” and “expedient”, we ALWAYS choose the latter.
Whatever. She may have been right then, but she’s been dead wrong many times since when she’s been in positions of power.
She’s preparing cutbacks to a second stimulus bill.
She’s committed to bullsh*t “bipartsianship” instead of doing the right thing. She held back on the first bill wanting to instead commit to means-testing. On the second, she wants bipartisanship.
The House should be passing a significant support bill providing $2000 per person per month and a host of protections for renters and small businesses. Instead we’re saying that clean water infrastructure will have to wait because we can’t get a bunch of republicans to support.
I don’t care what she supported in the 90s. I care what she’s doing when she is one of the most powerful people in the world.