A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

As I have discussed before, a key feature of the campaigns of Hillary Clinton (assuming that one can say that her campaign is still a going concern) and Barack Obama is the argument that if one of them is elected, America will finally take the actions necessary to win respect and admiration in the world.

Of course, matters don't resolve themselves so neatly and so magically in the realm of foreign policy. And it is worth noting anew that in the realm of trade policy in particular, Obama and Clinton look to be angering the world community rather than winning it over.

To wit:

Peter Mandelson, European trade commissioner, has said the protectionist stances taken by the US presidential candidates risk taking the world trading system back by decades.

In an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk programme to be broadcast on Thursday, Mr Mandelson said: "It is irresponsible to be pretending to people you can erect new protection, new tariff barriers around your economy in this 21st century global age and still succeed in sustaining peoples' living standards and jobs. It is a mirage and they know it."

Mr Mandelson declined to say which candidates he had in mind, but the context made it clear he was referring to Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "You match the rhetoric. I am not going to do that."

"But this is all just talk, necessary to win votes in the race for the Democratic nomination! Once the general election rolls around, the Democratic nominee will say nice things about trade and as President, the Democratic nominee will be responsible." So emanates the protestations from at least some readers.

The problem, of course, is that words do matter. Back to Mandelson:

Mr Mandelson said that even the rhetoric of protectionism was damaging. "It is very irresponsible in my view to pretend to people that we can disengage from international trade, we can create barriers around our economy and then be surprised when people retaliate by doing the same," he said. "It is going to lead us into a vicious spiral of beggar-thy-neighbour policies which will take us decades back in terms of trade growth."

Mandelson might have mentioned as well that if you repeatedly trash free trade to your own constituency, you will have an exceedingly hard time going back to that constituency and asking it to be responsible when it comes time to actually formulate and implement trade policy.

But then, so it goes with the "reality-based community," whose existence inadvertently mocks Dante Alighieri and his observation "nomina sunt consequentia rerum."