Curb your enthusiasm
Barack Obama, like all presidents, will make U.S. interests his priority, observers say -- and this reality means that, despite Canadians' admiration for the new president, his election 'will probably not mean a warm and cozy relationship with Canada.
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Robert Sibley, Citizen Special
Published: Saturday, November 08, 2008
CHICAGO - Anti-Americanism is so deeply embedded in the Canadian psyche that it sometimes seems part of what it means to be Canadian. We are Canadian because we are not American. Sadly, this negative assertion of identity has been particularly virulent in recent years, largely because of antipathy toward the Bush administration and the Iraq war.
Former Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish, to mention one notorious example, encapsulated this hostility when she stomped on a George Bush doll and declared, "Damn Americans, I hate those bastards." Françoise Ducros, the one-time communications director for prime minister Jean Chrétien, referred to Mr. Bush as a "moron." Such hostility goes a long way to explain Canadians' enthusiasm for the new Democratic president-in-waiting, Barack Obama. He is everything that Mr. Bush is not, or so they'd like to believe.
Of course, Canadians have long preferred Democratic to Republican presidents. The hostility toward Mr. Bush and his policies merely pushed this preference to an extreme. Still, the enthusiasm for Mr. Obama goes far beyond anybody-but-Bush sentiment. Like Americans, Canadians have cast him as the cure-all for the ills of the United States and, by extension, the world. Indeed, Canadians would have voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama if they'd had the chance. Pre-election polls showed that more than 70 per cent of Canadians favoured the Democratic candidate, compared to fewer than 20 per cent for the Republicans' John McCain. They also share the world's great expectations for an Obama presidency. Some 75 per cent of Canadian respondents believe Mr. Obama's election will mean good things for Canada.
Unquestionably, the election of a black, liberal Democrat to the presidency portends changes to American policies, domestic and foreign. Rev. James Forbes, president of U.S.-based Healing of the Nations Foundations, summed up this expectation at a recent conference of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago, when he described those who voted for Mr. Obama as engaging in a "major symbolic act" that reflected the desire of Americans to heal their country's relations with the rest of the world. "He (Mr. Obama) is not just any American. He brings the capacity to get inside the cultures of many people."
Michael Lerner, a prominent American Jewish rabbi and editor of Tikkun magazine, echoed that sentiment when he told conference attendees that Mr. Obama represents the politics of hope versus the politics of fear. It was Mr. Obama's ability to "stay true to that message of hope" that would win him the election, says Mr. Lerner. "Obama needs to articulate ... a new approach to foreign policy: what we call the Strategy of Generosity."
Mr. Obama certainly appears to be as different from Mr. Bush "as Mars is from Venus," to borrow historian David Bercuson's phrase. But appearances don't always correlate to reality. Paul Cellucci, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada, said recently that an Obama presidency might be "a little bit of a danger for Canada." Mr. Cellucci was a Bush appointee, so the remark may have been partisan. But that doesn't necessarily invalidate the point, say scholars.
"Obama has come into power on the rhetoric of change and hope," says Michael Hart, a Carleton University professor of international relations. "Two years from now, people will wonder, 'what was it that convinced us he was the man who'd fix everything'?"
Barry Cooper, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, is also skeptical Mr. Obama will live up to the messianic hopes people have invested in him. "I think he's a confidence man, quite frankly. He has addressed badly some serious issues, but there's a huge number of issues that he's papered over with this business about hope."
Even those who think an Obama administration will be a positive change acknowledge that Canadians, like Americans, have invested the president-elect with expectations on which it will be difficult to deliver. "Hopes are well in excess of realization all across the board," says Derek Burney, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States. "The biggest fundamental challenge he will face is even coming close to meeting any of those expectations."
Nevertheless, others such as Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and Germany, argue Mr. Obama's election is a "signal that America is capable of serious change and of keeping faith with its vast promise."
"The world, including Canada, needs the United States to return to the astute, principled leadership it once provided," says Mr. Heinbecker, a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation at Wilfrid Laurier University. "The world is more likely to accept that kind of leadership from someone who represents a break with the unpopular, exceptionalist, military-based, unilateral policies of the Bush administration."
Maybe so, but that still leaves the question whether Canadians' expectations of Mr. Obama are too high. His administration won't be subjected to the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that would have been directed at John McCain, if he'd won the election, but is it naive to assume Canada will benefit unequivocally from the new order in Washington? Mr. Obama may be a liberal and a Democrat, but he is also "a patriotic and mainstream American who will, quite simply, pursue American national interests -- as did George W. Bush -- albeit in a different way," says Mr. Bercuson. The realities of American national interests, says the University of Calgary historian, "will probably not mean a warm and cozy relationship with Canada."
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During his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama stirred concern in Canada on a number of issues. He said that if elected he would insist on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, suggesting the United States would opt out of NAFTA if Canada and Mexico didn't agree to new labour and environmental standards. Was he serious, or was he pandering to American labour organizations and constituencies in industrial states? Should Ontario and Quebec be concerned?
Mr. Obama also referred to Canadian oil exports to the United States as "dirty, dwindling and dangerously expensive." Was this more pandering to the environmental lobby? Should Alberta and Saskatchewan worry?
To some degree, Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric can be regarded as just that, particularly when it comes to Canadian oil. "There's no way on God's green earth that the Americans will turn off the tap," says Barry Cooper. However, renegotiating NAFTA is not out of the realm of possibility. The Democrats, who now dominate the U.S. Congress, tend to be more protectionist than Republicans. Many represent northeastern states that have lost manufacturing industries to foreign lands. Justified or not, the trade agreement has become, in Paul Heinbecker's words, "a metaphor for bad economic times." Mr. Obama will inevitably face pressure from a Democrat-controlled Congress, which has authority over American trade policy, to renegotiate the agreement. While much of the pressure would be directed toward Mexico, Canada would also be caught in the squeeze.
This was Mr. Cellucci's point: "There will be pressure on Barack Obama to ... open up NAFTA and make significant changes, I don't think that's in the U.S. interest; I don't think that's in Canadian interests."
It is "extremely unlikely" the United States would abandon NAFTA, says Mr. Heinbecker. "There are too many benefits from NAFTA, not least energy security, for the Americans to walk away from it." Still, Mr. Heinbecker acknowledges renegotiating NAFTA would likely result in some loss of trade and jobs for Canada. Canada, he says, would need "a lot of preparation and forethought" to ensure it benefits from any negotiations.
But then "forethought" should be the watchword for any Canadian government in dealing with the Obama administration, says Derek Burney, a senior strategic adviser for the law firm Ogilvy Renault, who played a central role in the NAFTA negotiations. "We can't go to Washington with a gimme list. We have to go with a list that says, 'this is as much in your interest as ours'."
He agrees Mr. Obama will be under pressure from labour groups and a protectionist-minded Congress to address domestic issues, especially the battered American economy. This presents a significant challenge for the Canadian government, which, he says, will only get a responsive hearing from the new U.S. administration if it offers ideas for solving problems of mutual concern -- everything from energy and the environment to trade and border security.
"You have to find a way of registering with an American administration through relevance in order to establish influence," Mr. Burney says. "Because Obama is going to be so overwhelmed by challenges -- an American president really has about six to nine months to show whether he's got the mettle for leadership or not -- it seems to me it would be almost easy for him to do something on his northern border, to show a sense of achievement that would give him momentum to deal with some of the bigger challenges out there."
Perhaps most importantly, Canada has to use its status as a historic ally and a major market for the United States, to persuade the Americans against their isolationist tendencies, says Mr. Burney. "If America retreats into itself, we're going to have a vacuum of power that's going to be very dangerous for the global situation," he says. "Canada can play a role in demonstrating how we can do things with the United States, but also demonstrating how we can be a constructive ally to the United States in some of the global challenges they'll be taking on."
That may be easier said than done. American presidents, including those Canadians admired, are not necessarily solicitous of Canadian interests. Despite the apparent friendship between Brian Mulroney and former president Ronald Reagan, it was second-tier bureaucrats in the Reagan administration who conducted free trade negotiations with their Canadian counterparts, Mr. Burney notes. Even relations between Liberal prime ministers and Democratic presidents have been frosty. Lyndon Johnson was so angered by Lester Pearson's criticism of American policy in Vietnam in the 1960s that when Mr. Pearson visited him he reportedly grabbed the prime minister by his lapels and yelled in his face, "you pissed on my rug!"
Relations between presidents and prime ministers have sometimes gone beyond name-calling. In the early 1960s, Canadians were as enthused about John Kennedy's Camelot-on-the-Potomac vision as they are today about Barack Obama's change-you-can-believe-in mantra. Many regarded prime minister John Diefenbaker as an out-of-date fuddy-duddy in his attachments to Canada's parliamentary traditions and British heritage. They adored Mr. Kennedy's youthfulness in the same way they now regard Mr. Obama as the "captain of cool," as one columnist recently put it. Would they have been so approving if they'd known of Mr. Kennedy's regime-change tactics to undermine Mr. Diefenbaker's government after the prime minister attempted to assert Canadian sovereignty in a way contrary to American preferences?
Mr. Diefenbaker was not anti-American. He admired president Dwight Eisenhower and accepted American leadership in the Cold War. But he still thought Canada was a sovereign nation -- "we are a power, not a puppet," he once said. He hesitated to accept American nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, much to the Americans' annoyance. Mr. Kennedy was also angered by Mr. Diefenbaker's hesitation in placing Canadian forces on high alert after the president announced the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
Historians in recent years have pointed out how during this crisis U.S. ambassadors to Canada briefed Canadian journalists, business leaders, politicians and even military officers on the follies of Mr. Diefenbaker's opposition to nuclear weapons. During the federal election in 1962, Mr. Kennedy sent his friend, pollster Lou Harris, to advise Lester Pearson and the Liberals. They used the advice to reduce the Tories to a minority government.
Mr. Pearson, it seems, was willing to set aside concerns about Canadian sovereignty for the sake of power. In early 1963, he announced the Liberals would accept American nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. U.S. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and the acting Secretary of State, George Ball, approved a state department press release that effectively accused the Canadian prime minister of lying. The Liberals, backed by the New Democrats, won a non-confidence vote in Parliament and forced another election. Once again Lou Harris provided the Liberals with state-of-the-art polling advice. Well-coached journalists attacked Mr. Diefenbaker like wolves bringing down an injured moose. The Liberals won a minority government, and shortly after taking office Mr. Pearson sent his external affairs minister, Paul Martin Sr., to tell the Americans, more or less, their warheads were welcome.
The lesson for Canadians was, and is, obvious: American presidents do not take kindly to unsupportive allies. This was true of Mr. Kennedy, and it will be true of President Obama, say scholars. "Obama will be looking out for American interests, however they are defined," says Barry Cooper. "Concern for Canadian sovereignty will be way down the list."
Michael Hart concurs. "No American president can avoid pursuing American national interests, which are not necessarily congruent with Canadian national interests."
The scholars argue that it would be prudent of Canadians to curb their enthusiasm for Mr. Obama, particularly given that their enthusiasm for the man is largely based on his charismatic appeal. Charismatic leaders, they say, can be both disappointing and dangerous.
Max Weber, the 19th-century German sociologist, defined charisma as "a certain quality in an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities." Mr. Obama certain qualifies on this quality. As Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins puts it: "The anticipation that he will be a harbinger of peace, friendship and economic salvation is probably greater than for any American since Roosevelt." He casts himself as the agent of "change you can believe in." He promises to "begin the process of changing politics and our civic life."
Some have taken this rhetoric to cast Mr. Obama as a moral prophet. In the words of Rabbi Lerner: "Some people have told us that it's not fair to expect a political leader to have the clarity of a moral prophet. But we say the contrary: it's only when moral prophecy shapes public policy that America and indeed the entire word can be saved ..."
This is heady stuff, but it's also potentially dangerous, tainting Mr. Obama with a patina of demagoguery unsuitable to and dangerous for liberal democracy. Politics is not a matter of salvation and politicians are not saviours. Politics is the human response to the permanent frailties and limitations of human nature, our less-than-perfect method for dealing with the inherent conflicts of the human condition. In Max Weber's words, "politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards." To believe there is a "process" for "changing politics" in the sense of ridding the world of conflict is to misunderstand the purpose of politics and to indulge in naive utopianism. Not only do charismatic politicians inevitably disappoint, but their disappointments foster impatience with the complexities and compromises of the liberal democratic system. "Changing politics" doesn't lead to salvation, but, all too often, promotes the kind of disorder that leads to authoritarian rule.
"Charismatic politicians are very often a disappointment because they don't bring a serious set of policy objectives that they want to pursue," says Mr. Hart. "The 'audacity of hope,' 'the change we can believe in.' Well, what is it?"
