Reporters covering the 2008 presidential campaign may remember my early suspicions that Barack Obama was not committed to a strong U.S. dollar policy, based on some of his early observations that a weak dollar would help U.S. manufacturers and exporters.

But those fears were allayed in June 2008, when Reuters’ Caren Bohan asked him what his dollar policy would be if elected President:

Obama, a Democrat, said that if he is elected president his policy on the dollar would focus on fixing woes such as the housing crisis that have had ripple effects on other areas of the economy, rather than on trying to manipulate the currency.

“The dollar is both a problem by itself, but it’s also a symptom of underlying problems,” Obama told reporters on his campaign plane in response to a question.

“I’m not somebody who thinks that we should spend a lot of time manipulating our monetary or fiscal policy simply to strengthen the dollar. What I want to do, though, is strengthen the economic fundamentals in such a way that the dollar, of its own accord, ends up being strong,” he said. “I do think we should have a dollar policy.”

Obama echoed those sentiments two months later in Ohio, drawing rare plaudits from the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

The underreported economic news of the week is that Barack Obama favors a stronger dollar. Even better, he thinks a stronger greenback would help to reduce oil prices.

That at least is what the Democratic Presidential candidate told a town hall forum in Parma, Ohio, on Tuesday. “If we had a strengthening of the dollar, that would help” reduce fuel costs, he said, according to a Reuters dispatch ignored by most of the media.

This is all especially relevant now, as the U.S. dollar sits near a 14-month low, gold prices are at or near record levels, and there is renewed talk of foreigners dumping (or at least diversifying) their U.S. currency reserves. (As Matt Drudge declared yesterday, “Kiss the dollar goodbye”.) Just as Obama noted in Ohio over a year ago, the weak dollar is helping push oil prices up.

So was Obama misleading in his endorsement of a strong dollar policy on the campaign trail?

No doubt he inherited a terrible deficit, but since then it’s only gotten worse. The stimulus and FY10 spending bills signaled a return to reckless non-defense discretionary spending increases (which President Bush actually managed to tackle for the most part). And rather than put the nation on a course towards financial solvency by proposing significant entitlement reforms in his budget proposals, he’s instead proposed creating new ones (like the health care bill being voted on in the Senate Finance Committee today).

Similarly, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have further undermined the U.S. dollar by signaling a return to protectionism. Never mind the Nobel Committee’s praising Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” In the arena that matters most – international trade – President Obama is proving to be closer to an old-fashion isolationist, rejecting bilateral trade agreements (like South Korea and Columbia) and siding with domestic unions over international trade partners (the Chinese tire dispute).

Finally, the President has been deafeningly quiet about the dollar’s steady fall. This is notable: Currency markets are one of the few places where government officials’ words matter nearly as much as their actions. Just last Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke sparked a small rally behind the dollar with a few encouraging words. Strong words from the President – in line with what he said on the campaign trail last year – certainly wouldn’t hurt as traders ponder the future of the greenback. Instead – as is quickly becoming a pattern on uncomfortable issues – President Obama’s opted to stay silent, compounding a growing problem.