THAT'S THE FUNNY THING ABOUT BEING PRAGMATIC...:

Politics of delay on Colombia pact (VICTORIA MCGRANE, 7/6/09 , Politico)

President Barack Obama keeps punting on the touchy issue of free trade — and it’s driving both opponents and supporters just a little bit crazy.

The mixed message on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is a case in point. [...]

The Obama administration seems to have settled on a policy of delay on the Colombia pact and the trade deal with Panama, despite sending strong signals during the Summit of the Americas in April that it wanted to move forward on both deals.

Obama’s remarks after meeting with Uribe on June 29 were essentially what he said about Panama in April. And that means the administration hasn’t spent much time crafting the benchmarks and other changes to the deal that it was supposed to be working on, business lobbyists say.

“I have instructed Ambassador [Ron] Kirk, our United States trade representative, to begin working closely with President Uribe’s team on how we can proceed on a free trade agreement,” Obama said. “There are obvious difficulties involved in the process, and there remains work to do, but I’m confident that, ultimately, we can strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States.”

But the reality is there has been little action — frustrating all sides.

...if the pragmatic thing economically is to pass the deals and the pragmatic thing politically is to kill them, then the pragmatist is rendered indecisive.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 6, 2009 6:28 AM