Hearsay and Conjecture

Before I reveal my doubts here, I am going to offer an entirely charitable and completely speculative take on what I suspect happened between Obama aide Austan Goolsbee and his friend at the Canadian consulate. I have no evidence to back up any of this:

Barack Obama has been offering a decent amount of tough talk about NAFTA and inadequate protections for American workers and the environment, and wanting to renegotiate. Goolsbee, wanting to be diplomatic and assuage any Canadian fears that they were about to get screwed, assured him that while Obama would want to renegotiate NAFTA, he would be seeking a mutually beneficial solution, and not strong-arming Canada into something that would be detrimental to their interests. Obama is not a muscle sort of guy. His history indicates that he strives to say all the right things so that everyone leaves happy. Are the things Obama is saying on the campaign trail about worker protections true? Yes. Is Obama so singularly focused on this that he'll fleece the Canadians? No. There is always more nuance* in actual policy execution than in campaign rhetoric, and that's all Goolsbee was trying to communicate.

Ambinder has a similar analysis here.

On the other hand, if the stories as reported are indeed accurate, it would not be the first time that a presidential candidate has meddled in foreign affairs in order to provide for conditions favorable to their victory in the election. It is not impossible, and despite my oft-professed admiration for Senator Obama, I won't rule it out. If that is the case, it was a colossally stupid maneuver and if Obama is as smart as I think he is, Goolsbee will probably be rifling through classified ads with a highlighter before voting begins on Tuesday morning.


*The notable exception to this rule is our current president, whose "nuance" is more in line with that of Chairman Mao: "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." While Bush's evasions of any sort of responsibility for his actions have given new meaning to the word finesse, the actions (in domestic policy as well as foreign) themselves are about as subtle as getting pistol-whipped, and the man has no interest whatsoever in cushioning the blow for anyone who may disagree with him.