Benjamin Lanka, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article about Indiana House Majority Leader, Russ Stilwell, campaigning for Barack Obama. Among other things, Stilwell supports Obama as a reaction to Senator Clinton’s history with NAFTA which Stilwell feels has been detrimental to Indiana’s economy.
Joe Hogsett, Senator Clinton’s Indiana campaign manager, is asserting that Clinton did not push NAFTA while she was First Lady. In fact, this is consistent with Clinton’s campaign assertion that she has “been against NAFTA from the very beginning.”
Pre-campaign news reports and documents from her time as First Lady show that this simply isn’t the case.
Randy Shaw at BeyondChron, a San Francisco newspaper, characterizes Clinton as “re-imagining” her history with NAFTA. He wrote about Clinton’s “re-imagination” in February, before Clinton’s “re-imagining” of coming under sniper fire in Bosnia blew up. According to Shaw:
* In 1998, the Buffalo News reported that Clinton attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and praised corporations for mounting “a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA.”
* On November 1, 1996, United Press International reported that on a trip to Brownsville, Texas, Clinton “touted the president’s support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying it would reap widespread benefits in the region.”
* The Associated Press reported the next day that Hillary Clinton touted the fact that “the president would continue to support economic growth in South Texas through initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.”
* In her memoir, Clinton wrote, “Senator Dole was genuinely interested in health care reform but wanted to run for President in 1996. He couldn’t hand incumbent Bill Clinton any more legislative victories, particularly after Bill’s successes on the budget, the Brady Bill and NAFTA.”
For the Indiana campaign, Hogsett and the Clinton campaign need to revise the NAFTA talking points. As I see it, there are 3 basic possibilities:
1. Clinton was and still is in favor of NAFTA; the anti-NAFTA rhetoric is just campaign fluff.
2. Clinton was always against NAFTA. She wasn’t being honest with people at the time by telling them she thought it was a bad idea. Instead, she was being a good soldier for her husband’s administration by saying it was a good idea.
3. Clinton was in favor of NAFTA at the time, but now that she has seen its effects, she is against NAFTA.
Hillary has an interesting grasp on truthiness.