Obama and economics II (Updated)

The Obama campaign had apparently been caught speaking out of both sides of its mouth on NAFTA.

Obama needs to remember that if you're going to try to be all things to all people you'd better hope that the people don't get around to comparing notes.

It makes sense for the NAFTA-bashing to simply consist of insincere campaign rhetoric. Why? Because it isn't consistent to implement protectionist trade practices while trying to "restore" America's standing with the rest of the world. Protectionism ticks off other countries because it limits their benefit from trade. Negotiating NAFTA to provide greater benefit to the United States almost inevitably means renegotiating NAFTA to the relative disadvantage of the other partners.

Will this begin to lift the intellectual slumber of the Obamaniacs?


Update:

Paul Mirengoff sounded a similar note at Power Line:

After one of the recent Democratic debates, I suggested that Barack Obama's campaign appears well on its way to becoming one of the most intellectually dishonest in recent memory. That was after Obama pledged to combat illegal immigration by helping to fix the Mexican economy, while simultaneously pledging to pull out of NAFTA unless Mexico agrees to U.S. environmental and labor standards.

The post goes on to make the appropriate tie-in to the Obama campaign's two-faced message on NAFTA.

One additional note: I found Rush Limbaugh a bit careless in his handling of the story. His version had Obama telling the Canadians to disregard the NAFTA stance he's presenting domestically. While that version is not entirely misleading since Obama is ultimately responsible for his campaign, it's misleading enough so that it probably shouldn't be communicated that way without some clarification. Perhaps Rush got around to clarifying and I missed it.

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