Bill Clinton: “I think so. It's a tough fight, but I think we'll win. But it's just a--it's really a debate over principle with me. And…”

“I think so. It's a tough fight, but I think we'll win. But it's just a--it's really a debate over principle with me. And I believe the United States has to create more high-wage jobs for the future so that we can start growing together again. The last couple of years, we've finally got some indication that the bottom 40 percent of our workers are beginning to raise their incomes equal to and after taxes maybe even a little more, in percentage terms, than the upper 20 percent. But that's after 20 years of complete stagnation. And the evidence is not clear yet. We have to change the job mix every year. The last 2 years, more than half our new jobs have paid above-average wages--dramatic contrast from the eighties and the early nineties. The only way for us to keep that trend going and accelerate it is for us to trade more in areas where we have a competitive advantage, where we make things that are sophisticated, with workers who make good incomes; we make more of that. That's the first thing. The second thing is, I believe the United States has to send a signal to our allies, particularly in this hemisphere and our allies in Asia and in Africa, that we know we're in a new world and it's a world in which we're interdependent and which we want to lead through partnerships. So I think the political interest we have in having stable countries growing more successful, being firmly democratic, working with us on issues like labor and environmental conditions argues overwhelmingly for the adoption of fast track and giving the President the authority to go do this work. There is a principle at stake here, so I would be fighting for it if I thought I had no chance to win, because it relates centrally to the way I see the world unfolding and the ties that I've tried to create for the United States in the Americas, in Asia, in Africa, as well as reaffirming our historic ties to Europe.”