NAFTA and Canada – Obama’s Lie
Barack Obama has been caught lying about his diplomatic outreach to Canada. You will recall that last week Obama denied reports that his campaign reassured the Canadian government that he just kidding about wanting to renegotiate the NAFTA free-trade agreement.
The Associated Press has produced a smoking gun that proves Obama did not tell the truth. View the full text in the first paragraph of the ABC report. In it, the notes from a meeting make it unmistakable that Obama senior adviser Austan Goolsbee told Canadian diplomats that Obama’s campaign rhetoric about NAFTA should not be taken seriously.
The meeting with Canadian Consul General Georges Rioux happened in Chicago, with diplomat Joseph DeMora taking copious notes.
Not only did Barack Obama deny the subject matter in the letter, but he also denied that such a meeting took place at all.
Obama is now in the uncomfortable position of having to assert that the Canadian diplomats, experts in communication by trade, got the whole story wrong. Oh, and that he forgot about the meeting too. For someone who is trumpeted as the next great communicator, we doubt it.
The reasonable conclusion is that the diplomats in Canada heard Obama correctly. That means Obama lied last week about what the Canadians were told about NAFTA and he is not telling the truth this week too. And it also means that Obama’s raw diplomatic skills due to his tender years are now a campaign issue that John McCain will exploit.









March 4th, 2008 at 2:29 am
I agree that this will likely kill Obama’s chances in Ohio. (Even if Obama has a good explanation, the timing of this is deadly for the polls today.)
Not sure I agree about McCain’s ability to exploit this, though. Obama will have a *lot* of time between now and November to clean this up. It might only take a single high-ranking Canada official with Obama sympathies to “set the record straight” (regardless of how true or false it is).
March 4th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Pedant, they have already “set the record straight” in Canada. Last thing they want is a fight with Obama so they decided to eat their meeting notes. Diplomats are so diplomatic.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/abc-news-continues-to-get_b_90499.html