Brad DeLong is a brilliant economist and a gifted writer for broad audiences. He can also be inexplicably harsh in his characterizations of those he sees as political enemies. Most of the time, said enemies are conservatives, in particular anti-tax conservatives. But on Sunday he began a post on President Obama’s decision to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese tires with the following sentence:

Why oh why can’t we have better Democratic presidents?

For anyone who’s ever read DeLong, this is pretty funny stuff. And the post is dead on.

Daniel Drezner has written an indispensable post on the tariff controversy. His conclusion:

With the Obama administration, however, this feels like the tip of the iceberg. Most of Obama’s core constituencies want greater levels of trade protection for one reason (improving labor standards) or another (protecting union jobs). This isn’t going to stop. “Trade enforcement” has been part and parcel of Obama’s trade rhetoric since the campaign. The idea that better trade enforcement will correct the trade deficit, however, is pure fantasy. It belongs in the Department of Hoary Political Promises, like, “We’ll balance the budget by cracking down on tax cheats!” or “By cutting taxes I can raise government revenues!” It. Can’t. Happen.
If I knew this was where the Obama administration would stop with this sort of nonsense, I’d feel a bit queasy but chalk it up to routine trade politics. When I look at Obama’s base, however, quasiness starts turning into true nausea.
Developing…. in a very, very scary way.

One of the new developments Drezner cites is China’s rising economic nationalism. Despite Tom Friedman’s enthusiasm for one-party rule in China, it turns out that even the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party has to respond to public opinion.

One hopes that the loud and angry chorus of critics of Bush-era unilateralism will now denounce the Obama White House for its reckless disregard of international public opinion and the health of the global trading system on which we all depend. Or something like that. To his credit, Brad DeLong has gotten the ball rolling.