From a recent Fortune
interview:
With the primary contest over, I asked Obama to
clarify his remarks on NAFTA. "I think that sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and
amplified," he concedes. Did his? "Politicians are always
guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself." During a debate before
the Texas and Ohio primaries, Obama said, "We should use the hammer
of a potential opt-out" to force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate
NAFTA. Now, however, he says he doesn't plan to unilaterally reopen
NAFTA, that he had just spoken with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper that morning (Harper had called to congratulate him on the
nomination), and that "I'm looking forward to a conversation with
him. I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out
how we can make this work for all people."
(Emphasis mine.)
While your typical lying politician will at least say something
along the lines of "I misspoke," Obama takes it to a new level. He
describes his lie in the passive voice, saying, "rhetoric gets
overheated and amplified" as if he has no agency, like an
exasperated child caught stealing Hostess cupcakes from the school
cafeteria who explains, "but everybody was doing it!" Keep in mind
that during the primaries, at the time in question, Obama economic
adviser Austan Goolsbee had visited Canada and told them that his
anti-NAFTA rhetoric was just about election time pandering for
votes in Ohio. Back then, the Obama campaign vigorously pushed back
against the story, but now we see that it was absolutely accurate.
It's one thing if in the midst of a debate, or a fierce exchange
with a reporter, a candidate loses it and says something nasty.
That's getting "overheated." But a calculated and sustained effort
to win over anti-trade liberal voters in a Democratic primary by
bashing NAFTA incessantly, only to say later that you didn't really
mean it, is an entirely different phenomenon. Obama wants to usher
in a "new kind of politics," and now we're learning that what he
really means is that he'd devise new ways to lie.
topics:
Trade
