Obama and Clinton on Obama's NAFTA Attack

My post yesterday with images of the NAFTA attack mailer sent out by Barack Obama's campaign was picked up by political reporter Scott Helman writing on the Boston Globe blog Political Intelligence. Helman asks of the mailer, is it "a fair shot or a cheap shot?" He notes that Hillary Clinton did not use the actual word "boon" in describing NAFTA -- that word was taken from a paraphrase published in Newsday.

Helman helpfully points to justification for the attack at Obama's campaign site, and a rebuttal at Clinton's site. Obama points out that Clinton referred to NAFTA as a "success" in her memoir, that a report on a speech she gave in Texas in 1996 quoted her as praising the "widespread benefits" it would bring to the region, and that reporters at Bloomberg News and the San Francisco Chronicle recently described her as having changed her position on trade (the latter called it a "flip-flop"). For her part, Clinton accuses Obama of consistently fabricating quotes, cites a National Journal report that called Obama the presidential candidate most likely to support further trade liberalization, points out two examples of Obama votes that appear to support trade liberalization, attacks his criticism that her call for a "time out" on trade deals is vague, and reasserts several proposals she has made for stricter trade policy.

It looks to me like Obama has identified enough of a basis to make Clinton's record about NAFTA fair game as an issue. However, Clinton and her supporters make a valid argument that his focus on the word "boon" is questionable, and of course his mailer is oversimplified in its characterization of Clinton's position. I don't think the mailer is so grossly unfair and misleading as to stand out as major blunder by Obama's campaign. I do expect Clinton to respond to it aggressively, and that's appropriate.