Just about a month ago, before the escalating debate over the ports deal, I pointed out that a new round of attacks was beginning to be launched against people who opposed globalization. The mainstream media is feeding that assault.

Today, you can read a superficial piece by David Sanger in The New York Times. Anchored on the ports controversay, Sanger writes about Bush:

His new theme is different, because it is all about interdependence. Two of his aides say the near defeat of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in Congress last summer — it passed by one vote, after arm-twisting by the president brought just enough Republicans back into the fold — jolted Mr. Bush into recognizing a new retreat from the world by his own party.

For the State of the Union address, Mr. Bush instructed his speechwriters to make global engagement a major theme, a big change for a man who ran in 2000 under the banner of a “humble foreign policy.” In the speech, he warned that “the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting — yet it ends in danger and decline.”

By the time he visited India earlier this month, he argued that while American jobs were often lost to outsourcing, “you don’t retrench and pull back.”

Sanger’s piece takes a failry typical slant. I don’t have a problem is his description of Bush’s views. But, what Sanger fails to do is to give any context to the opposition to globalization. The two sides are posed as people who are for globalization–and, therefore, are “forward-looking”–versus people who oppose globalization–and, therefore, do not want to engage in the world.

Globalization is not new. On trade, countries have exchanged goods for centuries. The issue is: under what rules will trade take place. Many of the people who oppose deals like CAFTA are simply saying “the rules are bad, let’s make different ones.” Unitl Sanger and his media colleagues start framing the debate as a debate over how to engage in trade, we’re going to be left with a meaningless picture of pros and cons.