oss Perot's apparent backing for Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination throws a wild card into the presidential race that will have far-reaching implications for both parties, most notably on economic policy.
Commentators have focused largely on Buchanan's defection from the GOP and the likelihood that he will attract many right-wing Republican voters, but the more interesting effect will be on the Democrats.
Buchanan speaks a rhetoric of crude nativism and class warfare. He has mightily offended the Wall Street wing of the Republican party by attacking corporations and embracing protectionism. This is a kind of low populism calculated to attract not just know-nothing jingoists but also ordinary blue collar voters who have been bypassed by the economic boom.
These are voters who ordinarily support Democrats. Traditionally, the Democratic party has delivered for such voters, through various programs of public spending and regulatory measures such as the minimum wage.
But lately, the Democratic party has not shown these left-behind voters very much. Indeed, when the Democrats lost the House in the 1994 election, it was almost entirely the result of defections among downscale voters.
Why are Democrats not speaking to their historic base? For one thing, the politics of budget-balance has left the impression that Washington is largely powerless to spend public money. For another, both parties have become the party of Wall Street. The Democrats, as the incumbent party, emphasize the general prosperity, not those left behind.
White House pollsters are convinced that the election will be won or lost among voters in the affluent suburbs. They counsel Clinton and Gore to hit upbeat notes, and not to focus on the darker side of this uneven boom.
But Buchanan's greatest opportunity for mischief is on the trade issue. Here, both major parties have an almost identical view: Freer trade is good, and anything smacking of protection is bad.
Even within the Democratic party, both candidates, Gore and Bradley, are devout free traders. The labor movement, a reluctant ally of the Clinton administration, has delayed giving an outright endorsement to Gore, in large part because the big industrial unions would like the vice president to pay more attention to the dislocations of trade. But if anything, Gore's rival Bill Bradley is even more of a free trader than Gore.
Unfortunately, free trade is something of an elite cause. It disproportionately benefits elites, and its theory requires something of an elite understanding. A voter who loses his job to imports has a hard time understanding why it doesn't make more sense to impose tariffs and quotas, and to encourage fellow citizens to buy American.
In policy terms, the choice is not Wall Street style free trade and Buchanan style protection. There is a third view, represented by figures like the House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt and much of the labor and environmental movements. But this view is not getting much of a hearing.
In the third view, more international commerce is to be welcomed, just like more domestic commerce. But in the same way that the national market economy requires rules, so does the international one.
In the past century, the national laissez-faire economy has been ''encumbered'' with multiple rules designed to protect ordinary people from its instability and injustice. These include minimum wage and labor-standards laws, health and safety regulation, banking and securities regulation, and social insurance. All of these are being sacrificed on the altar of free trade.
A principled fair-trade position would extend these social protections to the global economy, most notably in the field of labor and environmental standards. Countries that wanted free trade with the United States would have to have minimum standards of decency in their own economies.
This approach is anathema to Pat Buchanan, because as a conservative Republican he shuns economic regulation. But Buchanan's appeal to working class Democratic voters could well press Gore and Bradley to pay more attention to that segment of the electorate, both on trade policy and on public spending priorities.
I do not welcome Buchanan's entry into the race. He is a crude nationalist and anti-Semite. His latest effort to explain his nutty view that the United States could have stayed out of World War II contends that Britain could have held off Hitler alone.
The man is dangerous in politics at all, much less in the White House. But if Buchanan's entry into the race compels Gore and Bradley to notice working class voters, he will serve a constructive purpose in spite of himself.
Robert Kuttner's is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
