McCain accuses Obama of cowboy diplomacy

Cowboy diplomacy? For wanting to renegotiate NAFTA:

John McCain has accused Barack Obama of “cowboy diplomacy” over free trade that threatened to undermine relations with Canada and reverse the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Republican presidential candidate made the attack before heading to Ottawa on Friday for a speech championing the virtues of free trade. [FT]

Isn't surrealism elitist? 

If renegotiating NAFTA is cowboy, let's mosey on down to the negotiating table. Yippie kai ay yay!

Comments

[voxy]

didn't he learn ANYTHING from the warnings not to 'demonize' obama?

[Daniel Harris]

I bet he'd look pretty good in chaps, though.

[The Phantom]

voxy

Noone said that Obama shouldn't be criticized.

I've never understood why "cowboy" has been allowed to take a political meaning of lawless and reckless. There are very few real life cowboys left in the US, and a lot of them are good guys who are stewards of the land.

Someone from Arizona should know better than to misuse the term this way. He sounds like some illiterate from a French science-po class who has never been to America.

[Numad]

I'm fairly certain that "cowboy" is a reference to the fictional character type. Not the real life occupation.

[The Phantom]

Yes, but it's an ignorant Euro-import.

And I'll take the worst of the real or fictional "cowboys" from the wild wild west over almost any living politician.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Phantom: I completely agree with your sentiment, but IIRC there's a Zane Grey novel set in TX (yeah, like that narrows it down) with a tremendous amount of gratuitous violence, treated as 'standard' for the time and place.

What made it memorable for me was that a few characters, too crazy to fit in with the TX bunch, moved west to CA.

So I think the "cowboy" label is actually based on pop literature.

[Cass]

"John McCain has accused Barack Obama of “cowboy diplomacy” over free trade that threatened to undermine relations with Canada and reverse the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement."

First, McCain became "change we can believe in", then he aped Obama's website. Now, Obama's proposing Bush-style "cowboy diplomacy". How long before the right-wing blogs christen him O-same-a?

[El Cid]

If it matters, polls regularly show that pluralities or majorities of Mexicans themselves wish to re-negotiate NAFTA.

This propaganda that all Mexicans would feel all hurt & rejected if a U.S. politician moves to change the NAFTA accords is silly.

[The Phantom]

I question that NAFTA has had any negative impact on American workers. Really.

The real job-killer has been China and other Asian countries, where costs are so much less.

If there were no NAFTA, the jobs that were shipped to Mexico may have all gone to China, etc. At least when plants to go Mexico (or Canada), US based suppliers have a shot at sending parts to those very nearby plants at the border.

When a plant goes to China, all their suppliers ultimately do also.

NAFTA seems to be a big Ross Perot red herring to me. I have a few things from Mexico in my home, and a whole bunch of items made in China. Bet your house is the same.

If Nafta had never passed, the fundamental situation would be the same.

[The Phantom]

If Nafta had never passed, the fundamental situation would be the same.

The de-industrialization of America--and the loss of blue collar jobs due to automation of many types-- started way before NAFTA, and would have continued in the absence of a NAFTA.

[Cass]

"I've never understood why "cowboy" has been allowed to take a political meaning of lawless and reckless. There are very few real life cowboys left in the US, and a lot of them are good guys who are stewards of the land."

The problem is less the cowboys than the cows. See last month's Harper's on "the hazing of America's last wild buffalo herd."

The nineteenth-century cowboy was, by the way, a true working stiff, not the free spirit of songs and lore. His horse, clothes and boots were all most often the property of his boss, who paid him just enough to drown his troubles in a drunken stupor at the end of the trail. I'm sure it beat a job at the slaughterhouse, though.

[Jinchi]

Don't the Republicans like cowboy diplomacy? Isn't it supposed to bring to mind the picture of Ronald Reagan?

[The Phantom]

Jinchi

The image Reagan I think sought to project was that of a
"free man" who lived life on his own terms.

When "cowboy diplomacy" is used as an insult, which I usually hear from the Europeans, I think what is spoken of negotiation by reckless, stupid and lawless characters, who are presumably drunk and who speak in loud voices.

As opposed to the prudent, brilliant and law-abiding non-Americans who always do the right thing.

[SuperSloMo]

Behind McCain's criticism is the imposition of a binary choice: that there is either NAFTA or no free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada. He would like to paint Obama in extreme terms as wanting to scrap NAFTA and leave nothing in its place. I'm pretty sure that that is not what Obama is calling for.

Likewise, when McCain has Rudy Giuliani say that Obama has a "pre-9/11" mindset, they are presenting a binary choice between the mess of foreign policy and homeland security that we have now and probably the only thing that could be worse: treating terrorism as a low national priority that only happens in other parts of the world. But clearly there are other, better ways of conducting foreign policy and homeland security than the blundering, murderous, unconstitutional measures that the Bush administration has enacted these past eight years.

President Bush has famously said that he makes decisions with his gut. I would like to see what difference it would make to have a president who makes decisions with his brain.

[cfrost]

I’m not qualified to offer anything on the subject of the economics of NAFTA. As a biologist though, I can say that NAFTA and other forces of the recent explosive growth of global trade have yielded a parallel geometric increase in alien invasive species all over the world. These include everything from higher vertebrates like birds and mammals to parasites, and diseases. Think zebra mussels or wheat stem rust, or potato late blight (got any Irish ancestors?).

There has been some official consideration of this angle, but the free market fanatics are not likely going to worry about a bunch of obscure organisms that have funny names and/or which they’ve never heard of.

Invasive species and NAFTA. (PDF)

A slideshow (also PDF) on the same subject.

Re: Reagan and Bush (who never actually rides horses on his "ranch") dressing up as cowboys. What would you think of a Japanese prime minister prancing around in a samurai getup, or, God help us, a German chancellor in lederhosen?

[The Phantom]

--Reagan and Bush (who never actually rides horses on his "ranch") dressing up as cowboys. What would you think of a Japanese prime minister prancing around in a samurai getup, or, God help us, a German chancellor in lederhosen?--

True.

[TB]

McCain accuses?

That's rich ... coming from a guy who said, "One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit.'" to a group of wealthy contributors?

Oh, and I love hearing people who've never stepped in horseshit in their lives tell me what a cowboy is or isn't.

[Numad]

"Yes, but it's an ignorant Euro-import."

A quick web-search suggests that the expression dates back to criticism of Roosevelt by other Americans, the imagery apparently taken from Roosevelt's own use of it.

[The Phantom]

I suspect it had fallen out of use until somewhat recently when the French and others started using it a lot.

[Numad]

"I suspect it had fallen out of use until somewhat recently when the French and others started using it a lot."

I'm not saying that anglo-saxons have exclusive use of the image, or that I felt insulted by it being pinned on us (the French), but I'm just not convinced. There's really no need to invoke a sort of xenophobic ignorance from foreigners (the cowboy as a national stereotype*) to explain why the 'cowboy' images began popping up again in the time of Reagan and Bush, and I think that Americans and French alike could have even came up with it independant of each other. It's not a particularly inventive thing to do. I think that there are differences in tone and meaning in using the image on different sides of the Atlantic. Kind of like I directly went for the fictional Western reference.

I see nothing wrong with the term in principle. I don't see how it's supposed to apply to trade negotiations, though.

[Dock]

>It's not a particularly inventive thing to do.

But it's automatic for a bigot like Phantom.

[Numad]

"But it's automatic for a bigot like Phantom."

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but I meant to say that the cowboy imagery itself wasn't particularly inventive. Not that it's the only thing, but some others I take their lack of inventivity as a given.

[Pennant]

Maybe the image also has to do with cowboy westerns like "The Undefeated" from 1969 with John Wayne.

According to an imdb contributor, in the movie John Wayne and Rock Hudson had just returned to their camp after being forced to kill a Mexican bandit leader, who with his gang wanted Rock & Duke's valuables, their horses and their women. When one of the women asks the Duke why he had to kill him, he replied matter of factly, "The conversation sorta dried up."

Think about most pre-1970 westerns with conflicts between cowboys and native americans where the situation quickly degenerates into gunfire (and where eventual treaties are usually much to the detriment of the natives).

Those images and others from pop culture like Clint Eastwood's Man with no Name are what most people in the world think of when they think of cowboys.

[AJ Frémont]

That there word you shoulda dun used was, "negotiatin' table", that there's what us simple folk say.