White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is paid to deny the obvious on a daily basis, but even his ability to lie on behalf of his boss was strained to the max today when he told reporters on Air Force One the administration’s decision to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization about Chinese tariffs on American cars had nothing to do with the president’s re-election campaign. The WTO complaint just happened to coincide with President Obama’s bus tour of Rust Belt states where U.S. cars are manufactured and where he will beat his chest about the beastliness of China’s unfair trade practices. But though the move comes after three years of kowtowing to Beijing, Carney asserted that the complaint was in the works for years and the timing was pure coincidence.
“It can’t suddenly be a political action because it happens during the campaign,” Carney told the press. Oh, no?
This rhetorical flight of fancy doesn’t just display the boundless cynicism of the Obama campaign. It also illustrates the way the president is prepared to seemingly alter his foreign policy to suit the needs of his re-election hopes. Just as he expects friends of Israel to forget about what occurred during the first three years of his presidency prior to the current Jewish charm offensive he is pursuing, he thinks auto workers and their families have memories that are equally as poor.
