NAFTAQUIDDICK UPDATE: “In a conference call going on now, the Obama campaign is continuing to flatly deny that adviser Austan Goolsbee told Canadian officials not to worry about Obama’s anti-NAFTA stance. . . . He concedes that Goolsbee did talk to someone in the Canadian government, but insists the two were ‘essentially having some casual conversation, and the reports of the conversation are simply not accurate.’ Plouffe says Goolsbee was not speaking as a representative of the Obama campaign and that allegations that ‘somehow this was an official meeting’ are not true.”
UPDATE: Two Pinocchios: “The bottom line is that it has taken four days to drag something approaching the full story out of the Canadian embassy and the Obama campaign. . . . This is a case where the technical parsing of the truth by the Obama campaign falls well short of the whole truth.” Plus, there’s a memo. (Thanks to reader Paul Collacchi for these links.)
ANOTHER UPDATE: Noam Scheiber: “Two things make it problematic for the Obama campaign: 1.) The sudden appearance of this lurid-sounding memo written by a Canadian consular official. . . . 2.) Certain Obama officials denied last week that there was any contact between the Obama campaign and the Canadian government about NAFTA. That’s clearly no longer ‘operative,’ as Howard Wolfson pointed out on the call. ”
MORE: In a P.S., Scheiber plaintively asks: “What is it with these Canadians? Are they running some sort of entrapment operation up there? Why do they keep trying to torpedo Democratic candidates?”
And reader Matt Szekely observes: “If Obama can’t handle a goody two shoes country like Canada how the heck is he going to deal with Iran, Syria, China, Russia, France and other countries that have a somewhat higher level of difficulty? . . . This is like watching someone get bucked off one of the coin op kiddies horses they have at the supermarket.”
And reader Mike Riger comments: “The interesting thing to me about this whole episode seems to be that both the Obama and Clinton comments are, in essence, saying that they absolutely DO intend to be protectionist, anti-trade presidents if elected. And both seem to be more stridently painting themselves into this corner as the charges and counter-charges are thrown around.”