Canadian Prime Minister’s Office Says Clinton Campaign Didn’t Give Private Assurances On NAFTA
March 7th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The see-saw narrative continues in Canada with possible continued implications to the political campaign here: the Canadian Prime Minister’s office now insists the Clinton campaign didn’t give any private assurances on NAFTA, and it only came from the Obama camp:
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton never gave Canada any secret assurances about the future of NAFTA such as those allegedly offered by Barack Obama’s campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office said Friday.
With the NAFTA affair swirling over the U.S. election and Canadian officials skittish about saying anything else that might influence the race, it took the PMO two days to deliver the information.
After being asked whether Canadian officials asked for — or received — any briefings from a Clinton campaign representative outlining her plans on NAFTA, a spokeswoman for the prime minister offered a response Friday.
“The answer is no, they did not,” said Harper spokeswoman Sandra Buckler.
That response will come as a relief to the Clinton campaign, which has angrily denied that it has engaged in the kind of double-talking hypocrisy of which it accuses Mr. Obama.
The so-called NAFTA-gate affair took a bizarre twist this week that threatened to ensnare Ms. Clinton after having already damaged Mr. Obama at a critical phase of the U.S. election.
We ran THIS POST that detailed reports of comments from one of the Prime Minister’s top aides that in reality it had been the Clinton campaign that had given the assurances. So now there’s the PM’s aide versus the PM’s spokesman.
And each camp — Obama and Clinton — can now pick the version to believe, according to their political bias.
David Kurtz writes at TPM Election Central:
I’m starting to think that covering American politics is far easier than covering Canadian politics. But trying to cover the interplay between them both? A challenge of an entirely different magnitude. This NAFTA story offers no easy answers, no obvious heroes, and a passel of possible villains pointing their fingers at each other.
But one thing is certain: the timing of the report — coming right before the Ohio primary — seemed a bit smelly.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Primaries, Ohio, NAFTA, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, 2008 Elections, Canada, Democrats, Politics. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
