THE Bush White House never managed to sound very enthusiastic about domestic affairs. Foreign policy was its forte, we were told. With a President well schooled in international affairs, the stolid Brent Scowcroft at his elbow, and his closest buddy, Jim Baker, at State, the Administration preferred to rest its reputation on what happened beyond our borders. How does the scorecard look today?
There are major plusses. To begin with this hemisphere, the President bit the bullet on Panama, reasserting America’s ultimate security role in the hemisphere and striking a blow against drug trafficking. He built the best relationship with Mexico in U.S. history. The North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated and signed, with a domestic consensus behind it wide enough to include Bill Clinton. The Initiative for the Americas has helped end the Latin debt crisis and move the Latins to free-market economics and freer trade. Latin America is now our fastest-growing foreign market: exports to Mexico, for example, rose 31 per cent in the first six months of this year. Cementing American security, and political and economic leadership in this hemisphere, is a little-noted but immensely valuable achievement.
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