A few weeks back, the Washington Post wrote that Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama is running on a "platform of hope and change." Which is true enough--if by "hope and change" the Post actually means "despair and a change for the worse." That is certainly the case, anyway, when it comes to Obama's recent arguments against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and free trade more generally.

Campaigning in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas, Obama touted his opposition to NAFTA and pledged to "renegotiate" the 1993 treaty between the United States, Mexico, and Canada that established the largest trading bloc in the world. It was, of course, a president from Obama's party, Bill Clinton, who signed NAFTA into law over opposition from trade unions and protectionists in the Democratic Congress. But that was then. During last week's Democratic presidential debate, Obama went so far as to say that, as president, he would use "the hammer" of a "potential opt-out" to "ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced." His opponent, Hillary Clinton, agreed completely. One of her husband's signal achievements is now just a bag of sand to jettison from her deflating balloon.

Obama claims that NAFTA was "oversold" and vows to "stand firm" against similar agreements that "undermine our economic security." The American worker deserves nothing less, we are told. But the American worker actually deserves a great deal more: He deserves a forthright explanation of the tangible benefits of free trade. Even Senator Change-We-Can-Believe-In knows these benefits are real. Obama has explained in the past that it is "not realistic to expect to renegotiate NAFTA" and that Americans "benefit enormously from exports and so .  .  . have an interest in free trade that allows us to move our products overseas." In a John Kerry-like straddle, he acknowledged in 2005 that a trade deal modeled on NAFTA--the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)--was "probably a net plus for the U.S. economy" .  .  . before voting against it.

That vote may be seen as the beginning of his turn toward protectionism. The way Obama tells it, however, he has borne witness to the chaos wrought by free trade for some time--a quarter century, in fact. "When I first moved to Chicago in the early '80s," he said last week, "I saw steelworkers who had been laid off of their plants," painful evidence that the "net costs of many of these trade agreements, if they're not properly structured, can be devastating." What trade agreements Obama blames for 1980s deindustrialization, he did not say; NAFTA was far off in the future when he showed up on the South Side. And President Reagan had in fact imposed steel tariffs to protect U.S. makers. Productivity gains resulting from improved technology were, however, allowing fewer workers to produce more steel.

More likely, once the son-of-a-millworker dropped out of the Democratic contest, the friend-of-the-steelworkers saw an opening and seized it.

And so it was that Barack Obama--Columbia '83, Harvard Law '91--became a populist. His rhetoric is increasingly heated. In a "major economic address" in Janesville, Wisconsin, on February 13, Obama said that "decades of trade deals like NAFTA" included "protections for corporations and their profits," but none for "our workers," who have "seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear." In Youngstown, Ohio, on February 18, Obama said "NAFTA didn't put food on the table." On February 24, in Lorain, Ohio, he said "one million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs" in the Buckeye State.