Hillary on NAFTA: I was before it before I was against it.

This morning’s papers and blogs are full of commentary on last night’s debate among Democratic presidential candidates on CNN. Much of that punditry focused on Hillary Clinton’s recovery from a disastrous performance in the last debate, on Oct. 30, in which she stumbled badly on the question of driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.

But one of the most revealing exchanges between and among the Democratic candidates was over trade — and specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement and the current trade deal with Peru negotiated by the Bush administration.

Hillary must have been squirming a little in her self-styled ‘asbestos pantsuit’ when she was asked about NAFTA, which after all was signed into law by her husband. After prodding from CNN’s Campbell Brown, the junior senator from New York conceded, “NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would, and that’s why I call for a trade timeout when I am president.”

But here’s the problem for the junior senator from New York: her husband supported NAFTA during his 1992 presidential run only on condition that the final text include provisions protecting labor and the environment.

But once elected, Bill Clinton signed the NAFTA bill into law with very weak labor and environmental provisions, limited mainly to monitoring and investigation functions; the Clinton administration failed to develop the NAFTA tri-national commissions on labor and the environment into policy-making institutions capable of having any real impact in those domains. Not surprisingly, just as its opponents had predicted, NAFTA has been a disaster for labor and the environment. And Hillary is far from blameless in the affair. No mere bystander, Hillary was the first First Lady to have an office in the West Wing of the White House and wielded real influence over policy in the Clinton administration.

Only now that she’s running for president and seeking the support of labor unions — almost all of which are demanding repeal of NAFTA — has Hillary shifted from enthusiastic support to her present rather ambiguous call for a re-examination of the tri-national trade regime. What exactly is a “trade timeout”…? Hillary’s only attempt to explain that position was to talk about the need to “enforce labor rights and environmental rights.” But who’s against enforcing existing labor and environmental provisions in extant statute law? The whole problem was that Bill never utilized the very limited labor and environmental provisions in NAFTA when he was in the White House.

Uncomfortable with the question on NAFTA, Hillary was spared tough questions on the Peru Free Trade Agreement negotiated by the Bush administration and currently under discussion in Congress. But Clinton supports the Peru trade deal just like Obama, leaving only John Edwards among the three top-tier candidates in opposition to it.

“Had Clinton joined Edwards in opposing the Peru FTA, she would have stolen the spotlight from the candidate with whom she is competing for labor support while at the same time identifying herself as more attuned to the concerns of working Americans than Obama,” John Nichols wrote on the Nation’s blog. “It would have been a political masterstroke. But Clinton’s far enough ahead in the polls so that she feels she can dismiss Democratic voters. And, of course, she’s betting that she’ll collect enough campaign money from investment bankers and multinational corporation CEOs to buy the advertising that will allow her to buy down the concerns of soon-to-be-unemployed factory workers and soon-to-be-landless farmers.”

Hillary’s position on the Peru trade deal belies her claim to be engaged in a re-examination of NAFTA; if elected, the second President Clinton will do no more than the first President Clinton did to make NAFTA or U.S. trade policy more generally work for labor and the environment. But then again, what could one expect from someone who was an enthusiastic member of the board of directors of Wal-Mart?