Myths are already growing around this man Barack Obama, and the one about his having a rock-star effect on his audiences seems to be true — women have been known to faint while hearing his speeches.
Decidedly untrue, however, are the stories that would have you believe he is an intellectually honest, essentially nonpartisan, America-unifying enemy of special interests whose policy ideas could well convert the country into some new Eden where no one ever again would have reason to complain.
The evidence against this montage of political excellence includes his strict adherence to leftist, Democratic positions in the Senate, his pledge to withdraw from Iraq but return if al Qaeda shows up (al Qaeda is there already), his tirades about supposedly regressive tax cuts that in fact favored the middle class, and — especially during the campaign in Ohio — his voiced disgust at the North American Free Trade Agreement.
This last piece of bamboozlement — the candidate actually insisted NAFTA has caused the loss of 1 million jobs in Ohio — sums up much that’s worst about a slick, populist style that is finally either ignorant or intentionally deceptive.
Look at what a number of acute observers have written, and here is what you will find.
Manufacturing production has been steadily increasing in America even as manufacturing jobs have been decreasing, not because of trade, but largely because of technological developments and increased worker productivity, various writers have said.
When trade does join with other reasons to make some industries falter or go away, others will come along to take their place in a market-driven economy.
Since NAFTA was enacted in 1993, a net of some 27 million additional jobs have been generated and prosperity has zoomed upward, it has been repeatedly noted.
Rich Lowry of the National Review points out that NAFTA itself didn’t do much to lower our own tariffs on Mexican goods — they were already low — but that it did further open the Mexican market to exports that, along with those to other countries, are supporting tens of thousands of jobs in Ohio.
It has not smashed cities in Ohio or anywhere else, as Obama has claimed.
But if a President Obama should scotch this agreement and others like it, consumer prices in America would soar, currently low unemployment would reach drastic highs and the moment’s economic downturn would look like the good old days.
Of course, Obama is not quite saying he would toss this bum out. He proposes instead to reform NAFTA — to get Mexico to adopt tougher environmental and labor standards. The catch-22 is that Mexico’s chief chance to accomplish such demands is wealth obtained through trade Obama plans to yank if the country doesn’t accomplish them.
Obama, who has acknowledged that NAFTA does create jobs, surely knows this, just as he knows that he’s making the heads of some foreign lands, including some desperately poor ones, nervous about what his presidency could mean to their own economies.
Obama has tried to reassure them that he believes in free trade as long as it is fair, which is to say, he does not believe in free trade, which by definition is trade without a host of “fair” conditions attached.
What he does believe in is winning elections by appeasing such special interests as the AFL-CIO, which contends protectionist measures are good for its members.
This candidate would make me start believing in him if he said, “Look, folks, this stuff about NAFTA is bunk, and the AFL-CIO has no more credibility with me than any other group that would harm the country for its own sake.”
Now there would be a speech worth fainting over.
