Musical Deck Chairs, or The Bureaucratic Shuffle

Drawing on his public diplomacy and State Department background, my colleague Joshua S. Fouts analyzes the bureaucratic implications of my "Pragmatic Overdose" essay on how the Obama administration is struggling to articulate a coherent global development policy. His comments are reposted from The Imagination Age.

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From Evan's essay:

Security Should Not Define Development

Obama's advisors want to energize U.S. development policy by framing it in terms of American national security, calling development a "strategic imperative." This makes it sound important, but in reality it will backfire. The common wisdom is that poverty breeds instability. The problem is that scarce development dollars are not necessarily best spent in conflict zones. In fact, American development policy is hampered by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, which attract a disproportionate share of expertise and resources. These three countries are nowhere near the wealth threshold above which democracies tend to stabilize. They would be risky development investments even without conflict. The tradeoff is thus development projects where they might better flourish.

Evan's point is well-made. But it's an issue that will be challenging to the culture of the State Department, where I used to work. Development policy is closely related to cultural relations work (sometimes called public diplomacy) which suffers from a similar dilemma in these kinds of bureaucratic associations.

New Values, Not New Bureaucracy

As it stands, Obama's "New Way Forward" is more bureaucratic shuffle than fresh ethical vision—coordination between departments is necessary, but not sufficient. His team must dig deeper into the fault lines of American foreign policy and take advantage of a crucial chance to redefine America's global engagement.

We won't see a new way forward until the United States views other nations as equal peers in the quest to realize a good life, instead of treating them as instruments in pursuit of American national security or favorable trade. To achieve this, the State Department must stake out its own values—beneficial immigration flows, fair trade, and regional green energy innovation—instead of cutting turf from Defense and other departments.

Herein lies the dilemma. The State Department's "own values" are clouded by layers of historic turf wars fighting for the level of financial investment and support it needs to do its work. After decades of decreasing budgets relative to that of the Defense Department a culture of insecurity has been bred in the State Department. When I was there in the 1990s, the insecurity and desire to demonstrate relevance compared to the well-funded Defense Department was palpable.

The rhetoric hasn't changed much since I left in 1997, as I discovered last week when I was inducted as a Next Generation Fellow of The American Assembly. During round-table discussions about US cultural outreach efforts throughout the day with other fellows and observers, one participant, a public diplomacy foreign service officer, declared that we "should not have another discussion about bringing back the USIA." The dissolution of the USIA is a topic that gets brought up constantly during such discussions.

For readers who don't know, the USIA was the State Department's quasi-independent cultural outreach arm, which was dismantled in 1999 when Congress and the Clinton Administration decided (incorrectly, as the events of September 11, 2001 would soon prove) that we had won the war of global public opinion. The remaining parts of USIA that survived were folded into the new Public Diplomacy cone of the State Department.

Since then, the public diplomacy officers with successful careers are those who adopted the rhetoric quoted above. The logic is simple in an organization as bureaucratic as the State Department: Where you stand depends on where you sit.

The USIA, in theory, was a great agency, but the fact is that it always remained beholden to the State Department and was thus limited in its ability to influence perceptions of the United States. The debate about bringing back the USIA is a time consuming one during events aimed at enhancing cultural relations and, further, completely misses the point, namely that influence can no longer be imposed by rhetoric in the modern world. If an agency is created to address this need, the United States and global community would be far better served by a new method and approach.

Wouldn't it be more innovative, creative, productive, and, yes, more American, to champion investment in intercultural dialogue programs be they independent or governmental? The fact of the matter is, US government investment in cultural relations relative to defense is, at best, an afterthought. Worse, it is a joke, compared to the efforts of other countries. No US foreign service officer should be proudly defending the State Department from creating another USIA. They should be demanding increased funding for cultural relations by any means necessary.

Evan's essay is yet another reminder that bureaucracy does not change. I used to believe that the work of cultural relations and development were well-placed in the State Department. I now believe that we would be better served adopting the UK model by creating an independent cultural relations entity like the British Council. (Dancing Ink Productions is currently collaborating with the British Council on the development of a global creative space within the digital culture for real world cultural relations benefit.)

Based on an earlier report by retired foreign service office John Brown, it sounds like the Obama Administration agrees: Obama's Public Diplomacy Chief of Staff recently told Brown that people interested in doing applied cultural relations work should not look to the State Department for careers but should go to NGOs.

Encouraging passionate US citizens who are concerned about improving ties with other cultures to take their work elsewhere is entirely self defeating for the United States and will cripple us further in the global arena. The Obama Administration needs to support cultural relations financially as well. Government investment in fighting wars overseas should be considered just as important as preventing them by improving cultural understanding between people.

Sadly, there is no domestic constituency for cultural relations work in the US. So the likelihood of increased investment in this critical part of our interaction with the world will be left in the hands of others.

[IMAGE CREDIT: IISG.]

Obama Did Not "Take Down" Hatoyama

Hatoyama brought himself down.

Last night I was interviewed by Jim Swanson of Progressive News Radio. We talked about U.S.-Japan relations after Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama stepped down from office last week, and about what we might expect under the new Naoto Kan administration. You can listen to our conversation here.

One of the topics we covered during the interview was a narrative that appeared in several publications immediately after Hatoyama's resignation advancing the notion that somehow U.S. President Obama was responsible for Hatoyama's political demise. Never mind the distasteful samurai references to Hatoyama "falling on his sword" and committing "ritual suicide." Blaming Obama for Hatoyama's fall not only ignores the facts, it is patronizing to Japan.

The argument I take issue with essentially says the following: The United States had developed a cozy relationship with the Liberal Democratic Party during that party's decades of nearly uninterrupted rule in Japan. After the Democratic Party of Japan defeated the LDP in the August 2009 general election, the U.S. government got nervous that it no longer had a vassal in East Asia that would obey U.S. wishes and advance U.S. policy—even though the DPJ and the Obama Administration shared many philosophical views and the U.S. and Japan share many core security interests. Hatoyama's move to renegotiate an agreement that the United States and Japan had made in 2006 over the relocation of a U.S. marine base in Okinawa convinced Obama, the argument goes, to greet Hatoyama in international forums with an "icy posture," causing Obama to "lose face," eventually forcing the Japanese leader to resign. (Variations of this argument can be found in The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Slate magazine, Foreign Policy in Focus, and elsewhere.)

If only it were that easy. Wouldn't it be nice if President Obama were able to take down leaders of countries just by being "icy" toward them? Imagine the power. The United States could simply shape international politics through sheer will. If Obama had such supernatural powers, wouldn't he use them to eliminate troublesome figures like Kim Jong Il instead of allies like Japan? Perhaps like any superhero he must keep them secret to avoid unintended consequences. But that is also part of the Obama-is-to-blame narrative: The United States should be careful when using its power for it may face unnamed "consequences." At least this whole notion dispels the dubious "America in decline" school of thought.

The blame-Obama narrative also assumes no independent agency in Japan and therefore sounds U.S.-centric, narcissistic, and uninformed about what has actually been happening in Japan over the past eight months. Since the day Hatoyama came into office Japanese people have poked fun at the politician, calling him an "alien," "a professor," a "momma's boy," and a "pigeon"—a play off his name (see the video above of the prime minister during his last days in office imitating a pigeon).

Meanwhile, Hatoyama was wishy-washy on other things, including pocketbook issues like highway tolls and cash subsidies for families with children. Other money problems included Hatoyama's own campaign funds scandal and a ballooning budget deficit. Hatoyama's failed attempt to renegotiate the relocation of the Okinawa marine base demonstrated to Japanese voters that he lacked leadership skills and failed to appreciate Japan's security needs. It is understandable that Hatoyama would want to reopen the Okinawa base issue, but I believe he could have done so with much more tact, leaving himself room to maneuver in case things didn't look good. At the least, he should have sought a viable political alternative domestically before announcing to his ally that the 2006 agreement was off. As Obama's Asia advisor Jeffrey Bader put it this week at a meeting in Washington:

Secretary Gates visited Japan in October and made clear that the FRF (Futenma Relocation Framework) remained the best option, that walking away from it would damage the alliance. There was criticism of Secretary Gates' so-called "confrontational" approach. In fact, someone on the Japanese side chose to leak virtually the entire transcript of Gates' first meeting with FM Okada to Kyodo News, giving the appearance that Gates was seeking a public confrontation when he was in fact speaking frankly in a private meeting.

As we all know, PM Hatoyama decided in December Japan would not implement the FRF as agreed upon. He said Japan would reach agreement with us on a new proposal by the end of May and made clear his preference was to relocate the MCAS Futenma off Okinawa--if not off Japan altogether.

We thought this was a mistake, for various reasons. We made clear our disagreement to the Japanese government. At the same time, we did not reject Hatoyama's proposal to talk. We would have preferred to stay with the option so arduously negotiated over 15 years, and continued to say it was the "best" option, but we did not insist that it was the "only" option. Rather, we showed respect and understanding of the politics of Japan and the needs of the new government. We were frankly skeptical that delay would produce more positive results. But, that is how allies should treat each other, particularly in the "alliance of equals" about which Hatoyama spoke and which President Obama has accepted.

Hatoyama's mishandling of Japan's relationship with the United States and his flip-flopping on domestic issues precipitated a steady decline in his administration's public support from percentages in the 70s to below 20 at the end of his time in office. People I interviewed in Japan were predicting Hatoyama's undoing and Naoto Kan's ascent as early as November 2009, just a couple of months into Hatoyama's term.

The Japanese people's attitude toward security is paradoxical. Most Japanese understand that the alliance is important for the security of Japan (America and President Obama have been quite popular in Japan since Obama took office). Many Japanese want a more independent foreign policy but they are also reluctant to devote more funding to making that a reality given the country's extremely high levels of government debt. Making things worse, Japan is facing a declining population and is unlikely to open its borders to large numbers of immigrants. So the default position is to rely to a large degree on the United States, a proven, trustworthy ally.

On top of that, the blame-Obama sound bite is mostly an English press phenomenon, and has little resonance with the Japanese media. Foreign pressure (gaiatsu) can have a role in advancing change in Japan, but it needs a domestic constituency for it to actually work. The Japanese have been expecting Hatoyama's resignation for months given his poor performance in office. As a democracy, Japan was able to move on to a more promising leader. To blame foreign leaders for Hatoyama's fall would belittle Japanese democracy.

Obama, God, and the iPad

Did we get your attention?

There was so much speculation over the past few days about today's announcement of Apple's new tablet, the iPad--just hours before President Obama's State of the Union address this evening. He is expected to give a speech cheer leading on the jobs front, but not the Steve Jobs front. (Here is what it would be like if Steve Jobs actually delivered the speech for President Obama.)

Slate's William Saletan published a thoughtful essay this morning titled "Apple vs. Obama. Which is more important: Politics or Technology?" Saletan's guess is technology is the more important of the two. Given the apparent inevitability of rich democracies to become mired in vested interests, as I have argued in Foreign Policy magazine, Saletan might be right. Here is how he puts it:

Will the Apple tablet overshadow Obama? I don't know. But here's my bet: If January 2010 ends up being remembered for a political speech, it won't be Obama's. It'll be the speech Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered Thursday. Clinton denounced Internet censorship around the world as an "information curtain" akin to the Iron Curtain of the Soviet era. She championed the "freedom to connect"—an updated, online version of freedom of assembly. And she outlined a place for politics in the march of information technology. "On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress," she observed. "But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas."

While our politicians must accommodate both domestic and international politics, technology acts as an empowering force for social change on both levels.

Similarly, and somewhat profanely, people have wondered whether the new Apple product will save us. Some have called it the "Jesus pad." Others hope that the device will save the newspaper and magazine industry.

At least Apple has given the media something fun to talk about again. In fact this blog post was a bit of an experiment. In 2005, Slate coyly wondered why the press loves Apple so much. It seems to me that, like religion and politics, Apple just grabs peoples' attention. It is that simple. If you put one of these things in a headline, you are bound to get readers, right?

In any case, my colleagues were wondering what the next logical step would be after the iPad. As an aside, I think the new tablet could only be called an "iPad" as Apple seems to have a style guide for its products: It simply looks for the shortest word possible (phone, pod, Mac, bud, etc.) If the iPad could be used for augmented reality maybe the next phase would be a tablet helmet (call it a hamlet?) that you wear on your head. But knowing Apple's style, my bet would be the "iHood" or, even shorter, the "iHat."

Obama and God

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal contributes his thoughts on religion and Obama's first year in office.

As President Obama completes his first year in office, little attention has been given to a question that sparked raucous argument during the campaign. How would Barack Obama's religious beliefs affect his performance as president?

During the campaign, the question of Obama's long relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright loomed large. In some quarters, so did Senator Obama's middle name. The Obama candidacy was widely and deeply opposed by religiously inspired groups against abortion rights and gay marriage. There was similar strong opposition from those arguing for "moral clarity" on the war on terror, calling into question Obama's credentials to fight Islamic religious extremism.

Despite these voices, the Obama campaign managed to attract some faith-based allies of its own. These were newly energized groups with progressive views on poverty, health care, and climate change as well as their own views on "just war." Themes of social justice resonated through the candidate's platform. An astute listener could hear echoes of connection to the religious roots of the civil rights movement.

Against this noisy background, President Obama entered office without a religious identity as distinct as that of George W. Bush. The impression of Obama's ambiguous religious identity was reinforced by the life story he inherited as well as his deliberate choices. His Muslim-Christian parentage, peripatetic biography, and lack of life-long association with any single church made it unsurprising that he did not have a default place to worship when he and his family moved to Washington, DC.

Obama's best-expressed affinity to a theological tradition places him in the arc of Reinhold Niebuhr, a favorite of those whose Christian faith emphasizes pluralism and social justice over any allegiance to a particular doctrine or sect. Niebuhr's ecumenism is noteworthy for its combination of spirituality and openness. At its height in the 1940s and 50s, Niebuhr's sermons, speeches, and writings helped propel inter-faith dialogues that included not only Protestants, Catholics and Jews, but secularists and non-believers too.

As he took office, it appeared that Obama's religious profile would remain very different from that of his predecessor. The new president would be more Reinhold Niebuhr than Billy Graham. Niebuhr's model is faith-based, for sure. But it steers away from doctrinal proclamations and it is highly sensitive to the dangers of self-righteousness. Rick Warren, the conservative and therefore controversial choice to deliver the Invocation at the inaugural ceremonies, seemed to nod to the president's preferences in his attempt at ecumenism and humility in his remarks.

With all of this as prelude, I was startled by a Politico article published last summer—six months into the president's term—titled "Obama Invokes Jesus More than Bush." In his first high-profile speeches of his presidency—including widely cited lectures at Cairo, Notre Dame, and Georgetown—President Obama spoke of the Christian faith in language more explicit than expected. This choice of language may have been a strategic decision meant to counteract those who have questioned his faith. Or it may have been a deliberate effort to rally his progressive faith-based constituency. Whatever the explanation, it is important to note Obama's language in describing faiths other than Christianity is also highly detailed. In his opening remarks in Cairo, the president brought "the good will of the American people and a greeting of peace from the Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum." He concluded the speech with direct quotes from the Koran, the Talmud, and the Bible.

Obama's engagement with religious language signifies a commitment to moral dialogue after a period of high moral assertion. His goal seems to be rescuing "moral clarity" from those who confuse it with "moral certainty." Moral clarity asserts that while we can agree on what is irretrievably wrong (killing of innocents, enslavement of peoples, destruction of our planet) we also understand that there are multiple conceptions of the good. Let's not proclaim that we have the ultimate answer to what is good for everybody; and in our pursuit of our vision of the good life, let's not forget that we often make uneasy compromises.

President Obama used his moment of maximum worldwide attention in his Nobel lecture to explain his view of the proper relation between religion and politics. His argument respects the transcendent powers of religion as an essential element of human flourishing. Yet it emphasizes limits. As the president said, "evil exists in the world" and it must be confronted. Yet "no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint—no need to spare the pregnant mother or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith." In the tradition of Lincoln, Obama seeks commitment without excess, fidelity to principle without fanaticism.

It would be a mistake to oversimplify Obama's first year in office as essentially a story of the rise of a new technocratic regime. There is more going on here; there is the return of a new moral clarity that is genuinely humble, fact-based, and pluralistic. Pluralism can be defined as empathy for diversity while emphasizing what is common in humanity. This is a deeply American ethic. And it appears to be a priority of the president in both word and deed.

[PHOTO CREDIT: The U.S. Army (CC).]

Middle Path Policymaking in the US and China

A couple of years ago in anticipation of a Democratic White House and a new approach toward trade policy, I advocated a revised definition of "fair trade:"

Adam Smith showed that economic freedom allows people to maximize their potential to the benefit of all society. But total freedom, as Thomas Hobbes argued, leads to a short and nasty life. The Aristotelian notion of moderation might help reconcile this paradox: Trade should be neither too free nor too regulated.

Moderation, the "golden mean," and the middle path have recently come to characterize the current administrations of the two largest economies (using PPP) and largest emitters of CO2--the so called G2, China and the United States. Based on our conversations in China during our last two trips in the past year, two themes keep coming up: One is that although China's fate is tied to that of the United States, many Chinese feel fairly confident that their economy will pull through the financial crisis with no major political instability. In fact, some Chinese have sounded downright triumphant about their country's more influential status and its potential economic robustness.

Another theme that we have heard is that China will be drawing on many traditions to formulate its future policy platforms. One of those traditions includes Confucianism and the golden mean. Both of these themes come together in this fascinating op-ed in the China Daily, "Chinese model and the doctrine of mean," by Zheng Yongnian. Here is an excerpt:

But what exactly is the Chinese model? I think the Chinese model is a composite or mixed economic system. Its features include a mixture of ownerships, a combination of foreign and domestic demands, and the balance between the State and the market. The mixed economic model embodies a Chinese philosophy - the doctrine of mean. Guided by that philosophy, China has avoided extremes in the past 30 years. Neither neo-liberalism nor the traditional planned-economy socialism has dominated its economic practices.

China is the very incarnation of mixed-ownership economy. In the age of reform and opening up, China has allowed various types of ownership, including private ownership, foreign capital and joint ventures. But it has shunned hasty and complete privatization, and instead chosen a step-by-step trial-and-error approach. While reforming the sclerotic State-owned enterprises (SOEs), it encouraged the emergence and development of other types of ownership and gradually granted legal protection to all.

It is curious that the author is attempting to describe a "Chinese model" for economic growth—something that many Chinese and China watchers are reluctant to do for many reasons. One reason being that the historical factors that led to China's current position are so complex they cannot be emulated; another is that China's growth strategy, in all reality, has been ad hoc, not a coherent model.

In the US case, Obama has also been following the middle path of policymaking--an approach that carries its own risks. While the Bush Administration was almost simplistically clear about its policy goals, the Obama Administration is much more nuanced, measured, and therefore challenging to grasp. Some of this analysis has appeared in Slate this week.

In Jacob Weisberg's attempt to create a general theory about Barack Obama, he first notes Obama's equation of the middle ground as inherently a more moral ground:

He sees the middle ground as high ground. Candidates who talk about bringing people together, being uniters not dividers, or changing the tone in Washington are usually blowing happy smoke. At this point, however, Obama's focus on reconciliation is clearly more than shtick. We saw this impulse at work when he made pre-emptive concessions on his stimulus package in an unsuccessful effort to win Republican support. We saw it in another way when he personally brokered a compromise between the French and Chinese presidents at the G20 summit in London. Every few days, it seems, Obama, tries for a "new beginning"—with Iran, Cuba, the Muslim world, even Paul Krugman. Engaging with opponents animates him more than hanging with friends.

Similarly, and as several other observers have done, Slate author John Dickerson compares Obama to the Star Trek character Mr. Spock:

Obama is often compared to Spock because he never gets too hot or too cool and speaks in the careful way of a logician. But the president and the fictional character seem to have the same kind of empathy, too. Conservatives have interpreted Obama's call for empathy as some kind of soft-headed, group-hug approach to law, where how a judge feels about a case or a plaintiff is more important than anything else. Actually, as Dahlia and others have pointed out, all that Obama appears to be asking is that jurists have the capacity to embrace different perspectives and as much as possible stand in the shoes of those who will be affected by their rulings. The point is not to be overcome by fellow-feeling but to gain perspective.

All of this moderation in policymaking is a refreshing rejection of ideology- and faith-based policies of the past. It certainly bodes well for peace among great powers. But what, I wonder, will happen when bold action is required, for example in Copenhagen this winter? May I quote the singer Seal: "But were never gonna survive, unless...We get a little crazy." Will President Obama channel or find his Captain Kirk? Doing something radical for climate change will give the United States moral ground to push other countries to reduce emissions.

Photo by oceandesetoiles.

Is this funny?

Is this New Yorker cover funny? How about this mock Time cover of Bush?

I was reading the new edition of the New Yorker on the M15 bus this morning, going down Second Avenue. It was the New Yorker with the depiction of Senator Obama in Muslim clothes and his wife as a terrorist--a source of much controversy this week. The article I was reading was the leader in which Hendrik Hertzberg defends Obama's flip flopping on policy issues. Hertzberg ends the article with a joke: Flip-flops are preferable to cement shoes, especially in the summertime (is that funny?). Across the isle from me on the bus was a man wearing a button that read: NY (HEART) OBAMA. A pro-Obama publication in a pro-Obama city is trying to defend the candidate from the ridiculous suggestion made by a Fox News reporter that his "fist bump" with his wife was some sort of terrorist symbol. (If this cover were a true New Yorker cartoon, the caption might ironically read: So Fox News was right all along.") In trying to defend Obama, the New Yorker published an "inappropriate" cover. But isn't that the essence of humor? It just so happens that the current issue of the New York Review of Books has an excellent article on the history of humor titled "Isn't It Funny?"

It turns out that Plato and Aristotle were into the chortle and feeling that one was superior to others. I think the cover might fit in this category: Those who know better than to believe that Obama is a "secret Muslim." Here is an excerpt:

Most ancient theorists, from Plato and Aristotle on, saw jokes as an expression of superiority, humor as "mockery and derision," and laughter, therefore, as "a slightly spiritualized snarl." This is fine, argues Holt, for a range of unpleasant jokes at the expense of the other races and religions, of the poor or otherwise unfortunate ("How did Helen Keller burn her fingers? She tried to read a waffle iron"). It also works for the kind of temporary triumph we might feel if we saw "Bill Gates get hit in the face with a custard pie." It does not seem up to the task of explaining why we might laugh at puns, for example. You might conceivably argue that we are there enjoying a sense of superiority over language itself. "But now," as Holt observes, "the superiority theory has become elastic to the point of meaninglessness."

But more appropriate is the more accepted notion that humor derives its power from the inappropriateness of mixing symbols or meaning:

More popular among modern theorists is the "incongruity theory" of joking, which sees humor and laughter stemming from the inappropriate mixing of categories or registers of meaning ("Work is the curse of the drinking classes," as Oscar Wilde quipped). Or, as Kant put it more opaquely in the Critique of Judgment, a joke arises "from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." Kant's own example of this was a story of an Indian who looked astonished when an Englishman opened a bottle of beer and the contents frothed out. When asked why he was so surprised, the Indian replied, "I'm not surprised at its getting out, but at how you ever managed to get it all in." The problem here is not that jokes trade on incongruity, for almost all of them in some way do. It is why incongruity should give us pleasure, and why some sorts of incongruity prompt laughter and others (such as Oedipus' parenthood) do not. Besides, as Holt goes on to ask, why should the reaction either to incongruity or to a feeling of superiority be "a bout of cackling and chest heaving"?

Reasonable people should know that Obama is a patriot and therefore see the humor in the cover. Right? Well, maybe not. I did a quick poll in my office: No one found the cover funny. I guess there is a fine line between inappropriate and offensive. If I have to ask if it is funny, it probably isn't.

Hammering NAFTA

In Mexico City yesterday, signatories of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were highly critical of statements made by Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during their Tuesday debate indicating they would "opt-out" of the trade pact.

"I will say we will opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate," said Clinton.

Obama concurred: "We should use the hammer of a potential opt-out."

But as Michael Luo points out today in The New York Times, despite the harsh rhetoric, the candidates have staked out nuanced positions on NAFTA. Luo quotes David Gergen, an adivser to President Bill Clinton as saying that Senator Clinton was "extremely enthusiastic" about the trade agreement while it was being crafted. As recently as 2004, she claimed that NAFTA had been "good for New York and good for America."

Obama, for his part, while consistently hammering NAFTA, has not differed from Senator Clinton at all when voting in the Senate on trade issues. As Eduardo Porter notes in his article, "Nafta Is a Sweet Deal, So Why Are They So Sour?," the real benefits from a dismantling of the agreement would accrue to powerful industrial and agricultural special interests "who survive behind protective barriers." Specifically, American Big Sugar and Mexican corn farmers.

So why are Clinton and Obama itching to prove just how much more opposed to NAFTA they are then the other guy?

It's Ohio, stupid. The hotly contested state has lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the last five years.

In Ohio, which has lost nearly 225,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001, NAFTA is an easy target. For many working-class Ohioans – and the voters Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton hope to win in Tuesday's critical primary – it stands as a symbol for much that troubles their state. Against that backdrop, say experts, it's not surprising it's become a political piñata.