Apparently one of Obama’s top economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee, as been talking to officials in Canada and telling them that Obama’s anti-free trade rhetoric on the campaign trail - particularly his railing against NAFTA - was just “campaign rhetoric.”

WASHINGTON, Feb. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/—“Senator Barack Obama faces a huge credibility gap on NAFTA,” declared Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). “In a nationally televised debate, he told Ohioans he would renegotiate the treaty. But just weeks earlier, his senior economic adviser signaled to a foreign government that the Senator’s anti-NAFTA stance would be just ‘campaign rhetoric.’”

According to the CTV Television Network, a senior economic adviser to the Obama campaign, Austan Goolsbee, contacted the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago to telegraph Obama’s pro-NAFTA stance. Goolsbee is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, a Fulbright Scholar and a New York Times columnist.

As someone very much in favor of free trade I’m actually a bit relieved that Obama is in favor of maintaining free trade with our neighbors to the north and would hope that he’d expand such an attitude to include all nations of the world.  All the better for both our economy and the economies of our various trading partners.

But for the anti-free trade left - particularly protectionists like Senator Byron Dorgan who just got done endorsing Obama - this isn’t happy news at all.  And even for people in favor of free trade all this illustrates is Obama’s duplicity, and his willingness to say whatever it takes to get elected.

Now when it comes to sincerity and honesty it’s not like Hillary is a better option, but it’s worth noting that Obama isn’t the sainted political messiah we’ve been led to believe he is.