CLEVELAND — The Clinton people have dubbed it NAFTA-gate, and desperately wish the press would do the same. The Obama people try to shrug the whole thing off.
The question is whether Barack Obama's Canadian contradictions over the North American free-trade agreement could tip the balance in today's mini Super Tuesday.
Here in Ohio, where some polls give Hillary Clinton a slight edge while others show a dead heat, concerns over the sincerity of Mr. Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric could encourage voters worried about disappearing jobs to throw their support behind Ms. Clinton.
Or not.
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton speaks in Austin, Tex., on Monday. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
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“It might influence a few people who are sitting on the fence,” but not enough to swing today's primary one way or another, believes John Gilliom, a professor at Ohio University who closely follows the Democratic Party.
“Mostly what they're doing is just throwing everything on the wall, and seeing what sticks.”
Here's what happened, based in part on a leaked memorandum obtained by The Associated Press, and on reports from CTV: Early in February, Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's senior economic advisers, talked informally with officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. A consulate staffer wrote a memo based on the conversation, in which he said Mr. Goolsbee advised the Canadians that “much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political manoeuvring than policy.”
This memo made the rounds, and eventually the gist of the message was communicated to a CTV journalist, who reported that Mr. Obama was saying one thing about NAFTA to voters, but something quite different to the Canadian government.
Mr. Goolsbee insists his comments were taken out of context by the memo writer. The Canadian embassy in Washington strongly denied that there had been any communication between the Obama campaign and the embassy.
When that turned out to be technically, but not substantively, true – the communication was with the Chicago consulate, not the embassy – the embassy yesterday offered an apology, saying that “there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA. We deeply regret any inference that may have been drawn to that effect.”
End of story? Hardly.
Throughout a marathon 75-minute conference call with reporters yesterday, senior Clinton campaign officials repeatedly stressed the importance of the contradiction between Mr. Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric and the private assurances of one of his advisers.
“The fact that his aide would be saying something in private very different to Canadian officials is very much on the minds of voters in Ohio,” maintained Howard Wolfson, Ms. Clinton's communications director.
“Because it's just flat-out wrong to tell the people of Ohio one thing in public about NAFTA and say something quite different to the government of Canada behind closed doors.”
Ms. Clinton said yesterday that she believed the Obama campaign had given the Canadian government “the old wink-wink.”
“I think that's the kind of difference between talk and action that I've been talking about,” she went on. “It raises questions about Senator Obama coming to Ohio and giving speeches against NAFTA.”
Mr. Obama rebutted, while campaigning in Texas: “Nobody reached out to the Canadians to try to assure them of anything.”
Asked why he had appeared to deny a report last week that such a meeting had taken place, Mr. Obama rather weakly replied, “That was the information I had at the time.”
But while Mr. Obama's staffers worked hard yesterday to discredit the reports of the Chicago conversation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was busy apologizing for it yesterday, in response to a question from NDP Leader Jack Layton during Question Period.
Mr. Harper said that his government “regretted the fact that information has come out that would imply that Senator Obama has been saying different things in public than in private. The government of Canada does not condone this and certainly regrets any implication.”
The way the affair has been handled was not calculated to endear Mr. Obama to the Harper government.
“There clearly was a misunderstanding that was being fomented by folks within the government,” said one senior Obama official, speaking on background.
But the official said that the campaign appreciated that Ottawa and the embassy in Washington had taken steps to clear up the misunderstanding, “albeit in a tardy fashion.”
The CBC reported yesterday that the affair had infuriated Mr. Obama and his senior advisers to the point that it could impair relations between an Obama administration and the Canadian government, quoting an Obama campaign official saying, “Why is Canada meddling in the internal affairs of the United States. … To provide such a false account at this juncture on the eve of a crucial election is not an accident, and it is really, really stupid.” But the Obama official who spoke to The Globe and Mail described the reaction as “overblown.”
