Thomas Lifson writes it up at the American Thinker........




"The man who tantalizes the unhappy voter with promises of change may be discovering that this diplomacy stuff may be a little more difficult than it looked. After threatening the NAFTA treaty while pandering to Ohio voters facing declining manufacturing employment, the Obama camp was blindsided by a report from the Canadian television network CTV that his campaign had privately reassured Canadian officials previously that he wouldn't really change NAFTA, no matter what was said on the campaign trail, that it would just be a Northern version of what the late Senator Patrick Moynihan called '**** bait for the bubbas.' The Obama campaign denied such a meeting: 'The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.'" However, the problem is, "It turns out that diplomats often write up memoranda when they meet with people like campaign advisors to a leading presidential candidate in the United States." This is apparently something that didn't occur to Obama or his campaign.

"So now that such a memo has turned up, widely circulated among the Canadian diplomatic corps, Team Obama is saying that those stupid Canadians weren't able to understand that their advisor really meant. Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports: 'Barack Obama's senior economic policy adviser said Sunday that Canadian government officials wrote an inaccurate portrayal of his private discussion on the campaign's trade policy in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.' The memo is the first documentation to emerge publicly out of the meeting between the adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and officials with the Canadian consulate in Chicago, but Goolsbee said it misinterprets what he told them. The memo was written by Joseph DeMora, who works for the consulate and attended the meeting. Goolsbee disputed a section that read: 'Noting anxiety among many US domestic audiences about the US economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign.

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.'" This is what Obama's advisor wrote, essentially saying, don't listen to us. This is campaign posturing. "'This thing about "it's more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans," that's this guy's language," Goolsbee said of DeMora. "He's not quoting me. I certainly did not use that phrase in any way," Goolsbee said.' So, if we believe this version of the Obama campaign's story, then we have an important Obama advisor creating a seriously false impression in the diplomatic corps of our largest trading partner. Telling them that they didn't understand is not an excuse. Diplomats are supposed to be in control of their message."
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The bottom line of all of this: "If Team Obama is capable of screwing up relations with Canada the country most similar to us, the country that knows us best, and that has the biggest stake in the health of our economy and continuing American good will, imagine what kind of havoc would be created when dealing with the likes of the Russians, the [ChiComs], the Syrians, or the Palestinians." By the way, Obama knows he's going to get a pass on this, even though Nedra Pickler has weighed in on it.