NAFTA Gate?

Did Obama advisers tell Canadian officials to never mind about all this NAFTA talk? That it was just politics and something he never intended to do anything about? That's exactly what said Canadian officials maintain, and they have the memo to prove it.

According to the memo obtained by The Associated Press, Obama's senior economic adviser told Canadian officials in Chicago that the debate over free trade in the Democratic presidential primary campaign was "political positioning" and that Obama was not really protectionist.

The adviser, Austan Goolsbee, said his comments to those officials were misinterpreted by the author, Joseph DeMora, who works for the Canadian consulate in Chicago and attended the meeting.

Misinterpreted? Probably as in, "You guys were supposed to keep it a secret!!" Obama's denials are still as vehement as ever, but last week it was a denial that there was a meeting. This week it's, 'yes there was a meeting, but that's not really what was said.'

Of course I'm sure that a significant portion of the PM reading public will be quite certain that this is all Hillary dirty tricks and that the Canadian officials have been paid off. And honestly, that's not out of the realm of possibility. And of course the NAFTA angle is huge in Ohio. We have a significant union presence, especially among the Democratic voting segment. Hillary has been hammered on NAFTA (her husband signed it into law after all) in the debates and she wouldn't mind a nice little he said-she said to neutralize the issue in the minds of the Ohio voter.

This will do nicely.