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Obama Hits Clinton on NAFTA Support
By David Espo
The Associated Press
Sunday 24 February 2008
Barack Obama accused Democratic presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on
Sunday of trying to walk away from a long record of support for NAFTA, the free
trade agreement that he said has cost 50,000 jobs in Ohio, site of next week's
primary.
At the same time, he said attempts to repeal the trade deal "would probably
result in more job losses than job gains in the United States."
One day after Clinton angrily accused him of distorting her record on the North
American Free Trade Agreement in mass mailings, the Illinois senator was eager
to rekindle the long-distance debate, using passages from the former first lady's
book as well as her own words.
"Ten years after NAFTA passed, Senator Clinton said it was good for America,"
Obama said. "Well, I don't think NAFTA has been good for America -
and I never have."
"The fact is, she was saying great things about NAFTA until she started
running for president," Obama told an audience at a factory that makes
wall board, located in a working class community west of Cleveland.
Later, at a rally in Toledo, he rebutted the former first lady's statement
that her husband had merely inherited NAFTA when he won the White House from
former President George H.W Bush.
President Clinton "championed NAFTA," passed it through Congress
and signed it into law, Obama said.
A spokesman for Clinton, Phil Singer, said the former first lady was critical
of NAFTA long before she ran for president. He cited remarks from March 2000
in which she said, "What happened to NAFTA I think was we inherited an
agreement that we didn't get everything we should have got out of it in my opinion.
I think the NAFTA agreement was flawed."
Singer also said that in 2004 in Illinois, Obama spoke positively of the trade
agreement, saying the United States had "benefited enormously" from
exports under NAFTA.
The trade agreement has long been unpopular in the industrial Midwest, where
critics blame it for lost jobs and shuttered factories, many of which once employed
union workers who tend to vote Democratic.
Ohio and Texas both hold primaries next week, with 334 delegates combined,
and former President Clinton has said publicly his wife probably needs to win
both of them if she is to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Vermont and Rhode Island also hold primaries on March 4, but have far fewer
delegates and have not attracted nearly as much attention.
On another issue, Obama said he was not concerned that Republicans might attempt
to depict him as unpatriotic if he becomes the Democratic nominee.
Asked about a series of events, such as not placing his hand over his heart
during the national anthem, he said, "The way I will respond to it is with
the truth. That I owe everything I am to this country."
He also said patriotism had more than one definition, and that Republicans
had presided over a war "in which our troops did not get the body armor
they needed" or were sent into the war zone without enough training.
Polls show Clinton with a narrowing lead in Ohio, where trade has long been
a sensitive issue.
Its political impact has long been obvious in the state, since Democratic Rep.
Tom Sawyer voted for the agreement and then lost his seat a few years later
in an election in which trade was the key issue.
Sawyer supports Obama and attended his public rally in Akron on Saturday. He
declined a request for an interview.
Given that backdrop, the issue is the core of Obama's drive to win the Ohio
primary and possibly force Clinton from the race.
At the news conference, he said Clinton has "essentially presented herself
as co-president during the Clinton years. Every good thing that happened she
says she was a part of and so the notion that you can selectively pick what
you take credit for and then run away from what isn't politically convenient,
that doesn't make sense."
On Saturday, Clinton called attention to her plan to fix problems with NAFTA
and a commitment against any future trade deals "unless they are positive
for American workers."
To an audience of Boilermakers Union members and their families, Obama promised
the same thing, with particular attention paid to labor and environmental concerns.
"Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that we can't
stop globalization in its tracks and that some of these jobs aren't coming back,"
he said. "But what I refuse to accept is that we have to stand idly by
while workers watch their jobs get shipped overseas."
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Obama Slams Smear Photo
By Mike Allen
The Politico
Monday 25 February 2008
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of
"shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted
smear.
Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that
aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention
to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
"The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as
a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya,"
the Drudge Report said. The photo created huge buzz in political circles and
immediately became known as "the 'dressed' photo," reflecting the
Drudge terminology.
Plouffe said in a statement: "On the very day that Senator Clinton is
giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign
has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen
from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that
led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in
New Hampshire, and it's exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns
away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world,"
said Plouffe.
The Clinton campaign issued an official response to the growing tempest - but
the statement from campaign manager Maggie Williams did not respond to the central
question of whether staffers circulated the photo.
"Enough," Williams said in the statement. "If Barack Obama's
campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing
is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional
clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.
"This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract
from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create
the very divisions they claim to decry. We will not be distracted."
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