NAFTAgate Chase
06 March 2008 11:11 am by Taylor Marsh
A new report has surfaced, adding a new name on to this tale, Ian Brodie. He’s
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff. It was Harper who called the leak of the
memo “blatantly
unfair” to Barack Obama. Here’s
the latest:
… Since 75 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton’s musings about reopening the North American free-trade pact had caused some concern.
Mr. Brodie downplayed those concerns.
“Quite a few people heard it,” said one source in the room.
“He said someone from (Hillary) Clinton’s campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry.”
Government officials did not deny the conversation took place.
They said that Mr. Brodie sought to allay concerns about the impact of Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton’s assertion that they would re-negotiate NAFTA if elected. But they did say that Mr. Brodie had no recollection of discussing any specific candidate — either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama.
CTV News President Robert Hurst said he would not discuss his journalists’ sources. … ..
When I originally spoke to one of CTV’s spokespeople, he stated emphatically that they stood by the facts of their story:
“The facts of our story are accurate.” – Greg McIsaac, Communications Manager, News Information and Current Affairs, CTV
There
is additional video from another network (via email), but it doesn’t add much.
The truth is that from the beginning, CTV.ca mentioned Clinton’s team in the
conversation as well. In the very first post I did on this story it included
Clinton’s chief communications director Howard
Wolfson’s response to the allegations that both the Obama and Clinton camps
reassured Canada on NAFTA:
The Clinton campaign, however, said no one directly or indirectly contacted
the Canadian government. But in addition, the Clinton campaign said
that they give the Canadian government “blanket immunity” to reveal
who supposedly called them. I’ve confirmed both with the Clinton
campaign.
At the time, Wolfson challenged the Obama campaign to do the same. This was before Goolsbee’s name had been mentioned by CTV.ca.
It’s no secret that Canada’s government is conservative and staunchly pro-NAFTA.
Brodie’s name being added puts a higher pitch on to the whole affair.
In the end, Canada comes off stirring the political pot for John McCain, while
Obama still appears to have handled the entire imbroglio horribly. As for any
involvement by Clinton’s team, unless Canada releases a name, we don’t know
much more than we did before, except that Ian Brodie of Harper’s office was
the leak. Canadian mischief? Unless something more is revealed, which could
happen, we’re stalled.
But it gets more interesting where Goolsbee is concerned or at least how Canada saw the conversation with him. Luiza
Ch. Savage has the full memo summarizing the Goolsbee conversation, via
Ben Smith. Reading it one thing becomes clear, in my opinion. This was no
off hand conversation. In it, Obama is described as the “least protectionist,”
something that Canada’s conservative government would appreciate, and that Goolsbee
also related that Obama was not “stressed out” by Canada. It’s also clear
that one of the reasons for the exchange with Goolsbee was because Obama was coming
off of a string of wins and the Canadians wanted to get a feel for what his
policies and platform would look like and Obama’s top economist was glad to oblige. Political arrogance comes to mind, which ended up coming back to bite Obama. One section reads: This meeting was somewhat illustrative of how the campaign
is faced with this challenge, providing evidence that there is more work to
be done to refine messaging and positions, particularly with respect to foreign
policy issues, even within North America. Again, not evidence of an off
hand conversation.
But the assumption that Clinton’s team was also involved has still not been
proven. The campaign has given the Canadians full permission to release the
name of anyone they know from the Clinton campaign who was involved in any conversation
like the one in which Goolsbee engaged. If the Canadians have a name and proof
of a conversation from anyone in Clinton’s camp, that’s exactly what should
be done.
