SAN ANTONIO - Senator Barack Obama faced new questions yesterday over reports that his senior economic adviser met with Canadian government officials last month and cautioned that campaign-trail rhetoric on the North American Free Trade Agreement should be read as presidential politics, not indications of future White House policy.
Obama and his aides, engaged in a fierce debate over NAFTA with Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign, said last week that no such discussions had taken place. But a leaked Canadian government memo yesterday confirmed a meeting had occurred, forcing Obama's campaign to defend its handling of the episode a day before critical primaries in Texas and Ohio.
Clinton, campaigning in Ohio, seized on the issue in an 11th-hour bid to challenge her rival's veracity, but Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, dismissed her accusations as "absolutely false" and a sign of desperation in the Clinton campaign.
When reports of a meeting between the Obama campaign and Canadian diplomats were reported last week by CTV, a Canadian television network, Obama's campaign called the story inaccurate. Foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, asked on MSNBC Thursday if there had been "any contact between anyone in the Obama campaign and anyone in the Canadian government about NAFTA," said, "There had been no such contact." Obama himself told an Ohio TV interviewer that such a discussion "did not happen."
But the Associated Press yesterday reported on a memo it obtained, written by a Canadian consular official, summarizing the Feb. 8 meeting between the adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and Canadian consular officials in Chicago.
"Noting anxiety among many US domestic audiences about the US economic outlook, Goolsbee acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign," the memo said, the AP reported. "He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."
Goolsbee, who teaches economics at the University of Chicago, is one of Obama's top economic advisers, and he has been a frequent presence in the campaign. The AP quoted Goolsbee as disputing the memo's characterization of his comments, calling it "a hamhanded description of what I answered."
Still, the AP's report on the memo prompted reporters, as well as Clinton and her operatives, to direct pointed questions at Obama and his aides about whether they had been forthright about Goolsbee's involvement, and whether Obama's oft-expressed concerns about NAFTA were genuine.
Clinton charged that the memo raises questions about Obama's sincerity and his commitment to trade reform.
"I don't know how you can come to Ohio and tell the people of Ohio one thing and then have your campaign tell a foreign government something else," Clinton told reporters yesterday morning before heading to a rally at the University of Toledo.
She added, "When you come to Ohio and you both give speeches that are very critical of NAFTA and you send out misleading and false information about my position, and then we find out that your chief economic adviser has gone to a foreign government and basically done the old 'wink-wink, don't pay any attention, this is just political rhetoric,' I think that raises serious questions."
Obama, speaking to reporters in San Antonio yesterday afternoon, said that his previous assertion that no such meeting had taken place was based on "information I had at the time."
"It turned out that the Canadian consulate in Chicago contacted my, one of my advisers, Austan Goolsbee, on their own initiative, invited him down to meet with them," Obama said. "He went down there as a courtesy, and at some point they started talking about trade and NAFTA."
Obama said that Goolsbee reiterated the position Obama has articulated on the campaign trail: that trade should be welcomed, but that NAFTA should be renegotiated to include stricter labor and environmental standards.
"This notion that Senator Clinton is peddling that somehow there's contradictions, or winks and nods, has been disputed by all the parties involved," Obama said. "Nobody reached out to the Canadians to try to reassure them of anything . . . . There's nothing more there."
The Canadian embassy in Washington issued a statement saying that the memo from the meeting was not meant to "convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA. We deeply regret any inference that may have been drawn to that effect."
The meeting even came up in Canadian Parliament, with the opposition party accusing the conservative government of meddling in the election, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressing regret for the flap.
Obama's campaign downplayed the meeting as a casual encounter initiated by the Canadians. The meeting was in no way meant to be an official conversation between Obama's campaign and a foreign government, aides said. Plouffe, the campaign manager, said he did not know about the meeting beforehand.
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.
