Time Essay: That Troublesome Panama Canal Treaty

How could such a good cause get into so much trouble? The Panama Canal treaty, which gradually cedes U.S. control over the waterway to Panama by the year 2000, is nothing if not reasonable and conciliatory. It is a common-sensical solution to a nagging, decades-old problem—one that has damaged U.S. relations not with an enemy but with a relatively good neighbor. Yet opposition has grown so intense that while the treaty is expected to be approved by a plebiscite in Panama this week, it is still in considerable trouble in the U.S. Senate.

Ronald Reagan almost accidentally discovered, during his bid for the G.O.P. presidential nomination last year, that the canal aroused high passions. Coming so soon after the U.S. retreat from Viet Nam, the question of giving up the waterway became inextricably entangled with the matter of American strength and pride—of patriotism v. surrender. Yet for all the opposition, the pact has the backing of a very wide spectrum of informed opinion, including conservatives like Bill Buckley and John Wayne. Four successive Presidents—Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and now Jimmy Carter—have backed negotiations and pushed them along. Faults may be found with an imperfect document in a not so perfect world, but its basic realism has not been questioned by those with some familiarity with the issue. Why, then, the rancorous debate? Says former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who testified on behalf of the pact: "A mistake was made in the beginning of the debate. We began to ball up our fists at each other without knowing what it is we were fighting about."

Some of the bare-knuckled opponents, of course, are less interested in the facts than in the fight; indeed, they welcome it. Much of the political right sees in the Panama Canal the ideal issue to rally the troops, gain recruits and make a political comeback. Conservative-financed literature is popping up everywhere, and members of Congress concede they are influenced by the torrent of anti-treaty mail because there is so little on the other side; The treaty, like many worthy foreign policy enterprises, lacks an organized constituency. Nevertheless, the canal issue is fraught with risk for conservatives. If the treaty is ratified, they are losers; if it is rejected and the canal is disrupted by violence, they are probably still losers, since their plans for a comeback could well collapse in a fire storm of recriminations.

The treaty's supporters have made a number of blunders. Battling on too many other fronts, the Carter Administration let the opposition get the jump on it by waiting too long to start educating grass-roots America on the intricacies of the treaty. Further, the White House's handling of Congress was not as adroit as it might have been. Carter's aide Hamilton Jordan complained of the Senate: "Some of those bastards don't have the spine not to vote their mail. If you change their mail, you change their mind." Senator Clifford Case, a New Jersey Republican who is sympathetic toward the treaty, coldly replied that such a remark was not ''helpful."