While President Barack Obama is weighing in against new trade protectionism in one bill, the trade-skeptic bloc in Congress has decided they want more protectionism in another.

Will Hillary be Obama’s VP? Well, who knows, eh? But Evan Smith, who is editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly magazine and an all-round smart guy, made a few bold predictions about the U.S. election during a speech to a magazine industry conference in Toronto yesterday.

When someone (no one knows who) leaked a confidential memo describing how one of Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s top aides allegedly told a Canadian official that Obama’s anti-NAFTA stand was political positioning, not policy, it touched off a storm of denials from the senator’s camp.

Ok, he didn’t. At least not yet. But maybe he should. The dustup on the Democratic campaign about which candidate really, really, really, really hates NAFTA (and which one just really, really hates it) has got me wondering when Lou Dobbs started writing speeches for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.