Free trade fun and games

Mark this Democratic hypercrisy (sometimes the yawning heights of the American major media get it right):

1) Obama and Clinton on trade

Are they hiding their true policies? If so, they could be buying a lot of trouble.

2) The Sin of Speaking Truth

Advisers to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton learn that it doesn't always pay to be right.

3) The New Liberal Taboo

4) Mark Penn's Transgression [George Will]

Hillary Clinton's campaign, which is a guttering candle, has suffered a perhaps extinguishing gust of ill wind. Her principal strategist has been forced to resign from that role.

Mark Penn's sin was to be caught doing something sensible, surreptitiously. That is the only way Democrats can do sensible things regarding trade when their party is pandering to organized labor. Penn's downfall makes him a member of a species that many Democrats insist is large and about which Democrats theatrically grieve: Penn is a casualty of free trade.

He was freely practicing one of his trades, which is advising clients on how to deal with the U.S. government. To that end, he met with the Colombian ambassador to the United States concerning how to win ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement.

[...]

She [who may just not be obeyed this year - MC] favored the North American Free Trade Agreement until she opposed it: She favored it back when she was a Cub fan, before she imagined being senator from New York and discovered, or remembered, that she had always been a Yankee fan. She opposes NAFTA and the Colombia agreement now that she is a presidential candidate, but her views might change again in a few weeks, when her status does.

Another politician promising to protect America from Colombia's economic might (an economy smaller than Connecticut's and one-43rd the size of America's) is Barack Obama, whose passion for "change" does not encompass changing his party's ritual of genuflecting at the altar of protectionism. Amazingly, that obeisance is enforced by unions that represent a tiny (7.5 percent) and declining fraction of the private-sector workforce...

David Frum is pithy:

First Austan Goolsbee tells us that Barack Obama doesn't mean it when he slams NAFTA.

Now Hillary Clinton's campaign manager is stepping down because he advised the Colombian government on how to pass a US-Colombia free trade agreement.

In both cases, of course, the candidates' secret position represents a huge improvement over their public pronouncements.

Oscar Wilde said it best:

"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy."

And Canadians still think "Naftagate" (hah!) is some big deal. Get a grip, folks.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at April 8, 2008 09:10 PM