In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.
"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
"Overheated" and "amplified"? As Nina Easton points out, "devastating" and "a big mistake" weren't words the press put in Obama's mouth.
"In Youngstown, Ohio, I talked to workers who have seen their plants shipped overseas as a consequence of bad trade deals like NAFTA, literally seeing equipment unbolted from the floors of factories and shipped to China, resulting in devastating job losses and communities completely falling apart," Democratic front-runner Barack Obama said at a Texas debate last week, making sure that all the woes of China trade got wrapped in the word NAFTA.
Said Obama, "One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio. And yet, 10 years after NAFTA passed, Sen. Clinton said it was good for America. Well, I don't think NAFTA has been good for America — and I never have."
And this last March, the Washington Post reported:
"In their final head-to-head meeting before Tuesday's Ohio and Texas primaries, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) declared that they would opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico unless those two countries renegotiated the pact's labor and environmental provisions to the United States' liking."
As Easton reminds us, "as the campaign moved into the Rust Belt, both candidates vowed to invoke a six-month opt-out clause ("as a hammer," in Obama's words) to pressure Canada and Mexico to make concessions."
Overheated and amplified, indeed.
Sounds like the same old stuff that politicians have been trying to get away with for years.
The more I see and hear of Mr. Obama, the more I realize there's nothing at all "new", in a political sense, about him.
Sounds like the same old stuff that politicians have been trying to get away with for years.
The problem is, Obama is an exceptionally lousy politician for the national stage. He thinks otherwise, largely because the Chicago Democratic machine, and the national media has shamelessly donned metaphorical knee-pads. He is a modern day Icarus, but not of his own design.
I don’t think this stuff will go unnoticed for too much longer. Even his supporters eventually will have him do this to one of their pet issues, and then they will start to pay attention. His little self-deprecation act only goes so far, too. This guy uses the word distraction more than Bush says freedom.
If he gets elected and THEN people figure it out, it will be a fun 4 years.
Two words seem to come to mind each time I hear Obama speak, or talk about a policy he backs, or states what he will do if elected:
EMPTY SUIT.
The story "The Emperor’s New Clothes" had nothing on this phony baloney. That anyone would waste their vote on him is why this country is in so much trouble.
Watching a naive, inexperienced Jimmy Carter Jr. who knows less about foreign policy than a goldfish and less about economic policy than Paul Slugman is not "fun."
It is worrying, and frightening. I like to work and earn my paycheck. To know that Obama wants it for his very own devices scares the f*ck out of me. It should scare you, too. That is not fun, at all.
Especially when Iran gets a nuclear weapon and a "President Obama" stands there like a blind naked man in the shower and does as much then as he has done in the US Senate, which is nothing.
Issue: Presidential Public Financing System Question I-A: As President, would you support and work to enact legislation to strengthen, keep the same, or repeal the presidential public financing system?
OBAMA: Yes. I have been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests. I introduced public financing legislation in the Illinois State Senate, and am the only 2008 candidate to have sponsored Senator Russ Feingold’s (DWI) bill to reform the presidential public financing system. In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) announced Thursday morning that he will not accept public financing for the general election, a move that will give him a major advantage over Republican standard-bearer Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
I guess we’re to presume that this questionnaire was filled out by yet another low level staffer while Obama was outside busy smoking a few dozen cigarettes.
So is he Senator Hopeandchange, or Sen. Sameoldsameold...
Cause he’s sounding less like the politics of change, and more like the typical politician, promising one thing to get voted, and saying another when he’s voting.
