What Are Words For?

(with apologies to Dale Bozzio, Terry Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo)

Drum on trade ...

Actually, the fact that Obama and Clinton jacked up the anti-NAFTA rhetoric just in time for the Ohio primary and will almost certainly abandon it on Wednesday is all the evidence I think we need. It's likely that a Democratic president will, for a time at least, put new trade deals on the back burner while they work on other priorities, but I'd say there's virtually no chance that there will be any significant rollbacks in our current trade regime. In fact, in a Nixon-goes-to-China sense, it's entirely possible that a Democratic president will eventually be a boon for trade by adopting some modest reforms that gain the trust of liberals and allow more trade deals to pass the scrutiny of a skeptical Congress. Who knows? Cut the right deals on farm subsidies and intellectual property and maybe we could even get the Doha round rebooted.

Strikes me as a pretty thin reed to hang your hat on. To Drum's credit, he's not buying the Obama-brand kool-aid. Hence, the so what if his rhetoric is "more reflective of political maneuvering than policy" mentality. But it seems to me that if you're staking your whole campaign on the impact of mere words, then the truthfulness of those words might be something of a big deal.

ADD-ON: Ed Kilgore adds a few thoughts on the topic (and adds Yglesias' historical note as well).