Seeing Robert Lighthizer’s name in the New York Times today took me back to the 1996 campaign, when in part thanks to his influence Bob Dole started backtracking on his support for NAFTA and the WTO deal. That’s why Dole did so surprisingly well in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. (Just kidding. He lost all three.)

In today’s op-ed he is arguing that conservatives and Republicans should be protectionists. (In part he is arguing against me; he mentions me, though not by name.) To make this case he notes that some conservatives have in the past supported protectionist policies, and some liberals have supported free-trade policies. That is true, although it is not particularly useful in figuring out which policies are right. But even in the process of making this weak point Lighthizer doesn’t play it straight. Ted Kennedy may have “supported the advance of free trade” in some instances, but lately he has more often opposed its advance.

His case that protectionism works is awfully peculiar. He notes that the Reagan administration protected textiles, for example. How is that a shining success story? The Plaza accords of 1985 were, on his telling, a great triumph over free-trade dogmatists because they let the dollar sink against the yen. Four paragraphs later, he tells us that free trade is harmful because it causes the dollar to sink.

Lighthizer believes that free traders are airy philosophers. People who represent the steel industry, as he has, are on the other hand practical and empirically-minded. Well maybe so, but you couldn’t tell it from this op-ed.