The Wall Street Journal opined today:
Democrats claim the world hates America because President Bush has behaved like a global bully. But we don’t recall him ever ordering an ally to rewrite an existing agreement on American terms — or else.
Yet that’s exactly what both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are now promising to do to our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada. At their Ohio debate on Tuesday, first Mrs. Clinton, followed ever so quickly by Mr. Obama, pledged to pull America out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if the two countries don’t agree to rewrite it on Yankee terms. How’s that for global “unilateralism”?
Well, it turns out our neighbors to the north do watch Democrat debates, and they were none to pleased with what they heard coming from the two leading candidates. Unable to think impure thoughts about His Hopeness Canadian public television reported:
CTV News has learned that within the last month a senior member of the Barack Obama campaign telephoned the Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Wilson. In that call the Obama operative warned the ambassador that NAFTA would become part of the debate in the Democratic primary and that Obama would take some heavy swings at the trade deal, but told the ambassador don’t worry it’s just campaign rhetoric … it’s not serious.
Watch the whole CTV story below:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAJYMgX4JuU[/youtube]
UPDATE: Canada and Obama deny such a call was ever made. Instead Team Obama re-ups on unilateral promise:
Both Canada and Mexico should know that, as president, Barack Obama will do what it takes to create and protect American jobs and strengthen the American economy — that includes amending NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards.
