Byron York on Goolsbee's "Screw the Midwesterners, eh"

Here's Mr. Y on the Obama camp's nod and wink at America's hat over his NAFTA rhetoric. Excerpts follow.

It began last week, when Canada’s CTV television network reported that, in early February, a representative of the Obama campaign assured Canadian officials that they need not take Obama’s NAFTA threats seriously, that those threats were just political rhetoric intended to win Midwestern primaries. The campaign, and the Canadian government, initially denied everything. “The Canadian ambassador issued a statement saying that the story was absolutely false,” top Obama adviser Susan Rice said Thursday night on MSNBC. “There had been no such contact. There had been no discussions on NAFTA.” Obama himself, asked about the story the next day, said, “It did not happen.”

But it turned out that there had been contact, and something did indeed happen. Later news reports identified the Obama adviser as Austan Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who serves as a senior adviser to the Obama campaign. Those reports said Goolsbee met with officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago, where the NAFTA discussion allegedly took place.

Can we tell one group of people one thing, and another group the opposite? YES, WE CAN!! Clintonian denials continued....

On Friday, The New York Observer reached Goolsbee himself. “It is a totally inaccurate story,” Goolsbee said. “I did not call these people.”

Then a report from the Associated Press pulled the rug out from under Obama. The report cited a memo written as a record of the February 8 meeting between Goolsbee and a man named Georges Rioux, the Canadian consul general in Chicago. The document was written by Joseph DeMora, a consulate staffer who was in the meeting.

“Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign,” the memo said, according to AP. “He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.”

The italics are mine; it's my favorite part of the whole article. It should be stressed that the word "messaging" means "something which came out my mouth but which is neutral in terms of its veracity." Sort of like the word "content" which makes no claim as to the talent of any given "content provider".

Finally, the Obama spokesperson "gives ground" after the denials with an "OK, but..."

Finally, Plouffe said that, whatever was said, Goolsbee had not spoken to the Canadians as a representative of the Obama campaign. “This was not a formal meeting,” Plouffe said. “This was essentially a tour, and Austan was approached not as a member of our campaign but as a university professor.”

So now the Canadians are being insulted just like them Midwesterners. We sent an American professor up there to give you Canuks a little Econ lesson. York's conclusion:

After talking with people knowledgeable about these events, it’s possible to come to a few early conclusions. One, there was a meeting. Two, the DeMora memo was a good-faith effort to record what went on at that meeting. Three, the conversation did touch on NAFTA. Four, the Canadian government’s statement was a carefully worded, diplomatic message that did not shed any light on whether the key accusation against the Obama campaign — that it privately hedged its position on NAFTA and then misled the public about it — is true. And five, the Canadian statement did say outright that Goolsbee was contacted because he was involved in the Obama campaign, not — as Plouffe claimed — because he was a university professor.

Obviously I have no idea how this will play out in the Ohio primary because I can't fathom the mind of a Democrat voter or a Union worker. I read somewhere that NAFTA helped create something like 250,000 high-paying jobs in NE Ohio since 1994, so not everybody sees it as a ghoulish monster. But like I said, I have no idea and I'm not on the Democrat robo-call list.