By Lee Byong-chul
``It's the economy, stupid," said James Carville, the lead strategist of the presidential campaign of then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, referring to Clinton's 1992 win over George H.W. Bush.
Yet South Korean pundits recently found it more poignant and threatening than the well-known phrase: ``It's Obama, stupid."
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama adamantly said in an address to the blue-collar audience in Michigan, ``Unlike George Bush and John McCain, I do not think that any trade agreement is a good trade agreement."
``I don't think an agreement that allows South Korea to import hundreds of thousands of cars into the U.S., but continues to restrict U.S. car exports into South Korea to a few thousand, is a smart deal."
Needless to say, he condemned the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) for its inequity, in his eyes, hostile to the U.S. market or at least skeptical of the Korean market, not to mention opposing the botched beef deal.
His speech was sprinkled with the language of populism, pro-growth, and free-market in consideration of the voters' economic concerns.
It's worth looking at Obama's economic philosophy, to get a sense of what toughness on free trade sounds like before it emerges as a solid government policy in the future.
His economic perspective is indeed embedded in the mindset known as the Chicago School. And he seems to believe that the current economic crisis is ``the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long."
While the South Korean government does not reveal its penchant for Barack Obama or Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, many Koreans that I know really like Obama and hope that he wins the presidency.
His book, ``The Audacity of Hope," is still on bestseller lists. His sleek face is already familiar to Koreans. I feel inclined to put the early money on the young Democratic nominee, though I'm not a professional bettor.
First of all, the incumbent President George W. Bush is extremely unpopular among voters, as we see by his current approval ratings hovering below 30 percent.
The current South Korean president is a good example. If in 2007, the then-President Roh Moo-hyun were popular, Lee Myung-bak would not have been elected president. It's no accident that McCain has tried to create some distance from Mr. Bush.
Second, assuming that the presidential elections generally give victory to the candidate who seizes the high road and offers a hopeful vision of where to lead the country, regardless of whether it is virtually achieved or not, it may well think that the candidate who controls the agenda wins over the long run.
In this regard, at the moment, Obama's change seems to be enough to hide his inexperience.
Third, Obama is an advocate of free trade that is the doctrine at the heart of neo-liberal orthodoxy. In particular, he continually emphasizes ``fair" free trade with other countries, while focusing on the need of ``tougher negotiators" on the American side of the table.
He demands that everyone play by the same rules. His challenging remark thus appeals to common voters worried about losing their jobs because of competitive products flooding in from foreign markets ― mainly China.
Obama successfully found a way to gin up the blue-collar supporters but in language that played to their perceptions and prejudices.
In the Korean imagination as well as in the Chinese, French, Arab and Muslim imagination, Obama is already the 44th U.S. president.
Yet `President Obama' may be a false dawn for Koreans, since he is likely to push for further liberalization by threatening to scrap the free trade pact awaiting ratification from the legislative body.
Obama, who opposed the agreement from the beginning, is fighting it with more gusto than any other politician. He also contended last month in a speech to farmers in South Dakota that ``You can't get beef into Japan and Korea, even though, obviously, we have the highest safety standards of anybody, but they don't want to have that competition from U.S. producers."
Unfortunately, however, his assertion is not quite correct, because America does not have the highest safety standards with regard to beef.
As a variety of polls across the U.S. indicate, nevertheless, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Obama might be elected president of the U.S. in November.
The Obama administration would force the Lee government to implement a fair free trade, rather than acknowledging that there may be asymmetric free trade between Korea and America.
Instead, Barack is likely to carry out his mission with the vociferous catchphrase of `leveling the playing field' that has kept rich countries including America economically solid to date.
His audacity of hope thus holds true of Americans only, giving them hope that the U.S. economy could improve by imposing fair free trade with other countries.
But his economic perspective of free trade is by no means fair. The United States, as a de facto single superpower, has lots of leverages to `cook' the developing countries such as South Korea in terms of global strategy.
In other words, his fair free trade is the wrong strategy if he really wants to be a global leader beyond merely U.S. president.
Free trade is an oxymoron. It does not exist without laws and rules. Further, the economic glory and prosperity of the U.S. might have been impossible without the full support of Great Britain.
It is difficult not to be disgusted by a rich country that had benefited so much from protectionism in the past.
So, many Koreans, including myself, believe in Barack Obama's `change' of perceptions toward free trade, as Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) right after being sworn into office.
Lee Byong-chul is senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation (IPC), a nonpartisan policy advisory body based in Seoul. He can be reached at bcleebc@gmail.com.