Smoot-Obama-Hawley-Clinton

That was the headline Time magazine's Mark Halperin put on his initial story on the most recent Democratic debate, and it is easy to see why. Under dogged questioning from NBC's Timothy Russert, both presidential contenders promised to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement within six months of taking office if the agreement is not renegotiated to their liking. Mrs. Clinton even claimed, "I have been a critic of Nafta from the very beginning," which was news to the many Americans who saw her husband tout it as one of his great achievements in the White House.

What a sad showing from candidates who are going around promising to repair the Bush administration's supposed alienation of our friends around the world. Is this how they plan to do it? By dealing with our neighbors and trading partners in Canada and Mexico with threats and ultimatums? If the ploy backfires, American consumers could wind up paying more for everything from Mexican avocados to Canadian lumber and maple syrup.

All because the environmental standards that arch Republican Vice President Gore negotiated into Nafta aren't strong enough for the Green extremists running for the Democratic nomination this time around — and because the candidates want to use the trade agreement, rather than the International Labor Organization, to dictate labor standards in neighboring countries. Something like 1,000 economists got together to warn Congress against a protectionist surge when Messrs. Smoot and Hawley were concocting the legislations that helped tip America, nay the world, into the Great Depression. One would have thought the Democrats would have learned.

What a contrast to our own Mayor Bloomberg, who sees trade not as a zero-sum game but as commerce that enlarges the pie for everyone, part of the open global economy on which one can't turn back the clock simply by withdrawing from a treaty or threatening to withdraw. A piece by David Leonhardt in Wednesday's New York Times noted that jobs in Ohio, where the trade issue is hot, actually increased in the two years after Nafta took effect and that the jobs lost since then have largely gone to places like China and India, not Mexico and Canada.

Between the call for a hasty retreat from Iraq and the effort to rewrite or abrogate trade deals with Canada and Mexico, the Democrats are looking like an isolationist party on the order of the Republicans of the late 1920s and early 1930s. With the economy already slowing and Democrats already threatening huge tax increases on income and payrolls, the last thing America needs is a new generation of protectionists. So the latest pronouncements add up to an enormous opportunity for Senator McCain.