By: Carrie Budoff Brown
March 4, 2008 10:30 AM EST
SAN ANTONIO, Texas – For four days after a news report alleged that Sen. Barack Obama’s economic adviser had told Canadian officials to ignore the Democrat’s tough talk on trade deals, the campaign gave incomplete – and sometimes misleading – explanations of whether a meeting had even taken place.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Monday night that the campaign had known of the meeting between adviser Austan Goolsbee and Canada’s consul general in Chicago since a Canadian television network, CTV, first reported the interaction last Wednesday.
“When they reported it, we were aware of it at that point,” Burton said.
Burton and other campaign aides – even Obama himself – vociferously denied the substance of the report, which alleged Goolsbee had given back-channel assurances to Canada that the Illinois senator’s call for reopening labor and environmental rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement was merely political posturing.
But for days, the campaign was less-than-forthcoming on a specific detail: Had a meeting actually occurred?
“Well, the Canadian ambassador issued a statement saying that that story was absolutely false. There had been no such contact,” said Susan Rice, an Obama foreign policy adviser, on MSNBC’s “Tucker” show Thursday. “There had been no discussions on NAFTA. So we take the Canadians at their word . . . Period.”
Also Thursday, Goolsbee told ABC News that he “would not confirm or deny meetings with anyone.” Yet he hinted at an interaction, saying Canada’s consul general contacted him “at one point to say ‘hello’ because their office is around the corner.”
David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, was asked Friday by reporters to comment on the conversation reported on Canadian television.
“The story is just not true. Obama's position on this is very clear. Our campaign and the ambassador have been very clear on this; it did not happen,” Plouffe said, appearing to tailor his statement to only address elements of the initial Canadian TV story that had been discounted.
The Canadian network tweaked its initial story last week to reflect that Goolsbee had spoken with the consul general in Chicago, not the ambassador in Washington, as it was first reported. It is also appears now that the Canadian officials, not Goolsbee, initiated the contact.
Despite Obama's promises to run as a transparent and straight-talking candidate, the campaign offered muddled responses that allowed the story to metastasize in the days leading up to a primary election in Ohio, where trade issues could prove decisive. Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have attempted to appeal to voters with promises to renegotiate NAFTA.
The story gained clarity only after the Associated Press obtained a 1,300-word memo Sunday written by a consulate staffer that detailed the Feb. 8 meeting between Goolsbee and the Canadian consul general, Georges Rioux.
In an interview with the AP, Goolsbee disputed a portion of the memo that quotes him as saying that campaign rhetoric “that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy.”
“That's this guy's language,'' Goolsbee said of the memo’s author, Joseph De Mora. “He's not quoting me.” By Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had weighed in as well, saying the government “regrets any implication” that Obama “has been saying different things in private than in public.”
Facing tough questioning from reporters in San Antonio, Obama said his flat denial last week of the accuracy of Canadian TV report “was the information I had at the time.” Aides said the denial referred to the report, not whether a meeting took place.
“The Canadian consulate in Chicago contacted one of my advisers, Austan Goolsbee, on their own initiative, invited him down to meet with them,” Obama said Monday. “He met with them as a courtesy. At some point they started talking about trade and NAFTA and the Canadian embassy confirmed that he said exactly what I have been saying on the campaign trail.”
Burton stood by the campaign’s handling of the story, saying the denials were in response to the “substance of the matter at hand” about whether someone representing Obama was consistent about his position on trade. “
At no point did we deny there was a meeting,” Burton said Monday, hours after Sen. Dick Durbin, a top Obama surrogate, denied the meeting on MSNBC. “We made it crystal clear to anyone who was covering it.”
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=7A599C51-3048-5C12-00D200E95BA86DED
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