Schröder of the North?

Except for Captain Ed, who seems well on his way to becoming a leading Canadian blogger, most of the U.S. has shown only mild interest in what is happening north of our border. In case you’re among the indifferent, the short version is that the Liberal government no longer has a majority in the House of Commons, has suffered regular defeats in Parliamentary votes and refuses to resign. It says that it will step down if its budget is defeated next Thursday (the day after a Conservative M.P. undergoes surgery for cancer; two other opposition lawmakers are also gravely ill). Meanwhile, it has been promising vast sums of money to special interests all over the country, despite the constitutional principle that a government without a Parliamentary mandate is no more than a caretaker and cannot commit its successor to anything.

The odds are that no last-minute shenanigans will be able to save Prime Minister Paul Martin from defeat, which means that Canada will have a new election soon under circumstances, viz., a scandal that makes Teapot Dome look like a tea party, that are far from propitious for his party. What kind of campaign will that lead to?

If Mr. Martin were a statesman of any degree, he would accept the necessity of losing. The Liberal Party will not be fit to govern a democratic nation until it cleanses itself of criminal elements, and a period in the minority offers the only real opportunity for purgation. It is glaringly obvious from his spending spree, however, that Mr. Martin intends to cling to power in whatever way he can. (A coup is happily out of the picture, because the enfeebled Canadian military couldn’t pull one off if it would.) Trying to bribe the entire electorate with public funds seems to be the current strategy, but it is a dicey one. Voters may decide that the benefits to themselves aren’t worth the price of paying off everybody else, or they may thank the Liberals for the promised subventions, then kick them out anyway, on the theory that the Conservatives will find themselves unable to repudiate more than a small fraction of the largesse.

It won’t surprise me, then, if the beleaguered P.M. turns to the Gerhard Schröder tactic: denouncing the United States for all that is wrong with the world. If anti-Americanism worked for a tottering governing party in Germany, and has so far been the chief bulwark of its corrupt and sclerotic French sibling, perhaps it will also succeed in Canada.

Canadian disdain for us Americans is a fine old tradition, but it has never been the main prop of a major party’s platform. Should the Liberals take that road and win the election, their country will start down the road toward Latin American-style politics, in which finding gringos to blame for one’s failings is a higher priority than dealing with real problems. Such success would also highlight an important point about anti-American agitation in general: Its principal impetus is not what America does but what suits the convenience of political elites elsewhere. Demonizing the U.S. is a way to profit from nationalistic envy and pride. At the same time, it is a relatively safe course of action, for it is nearly impossible, short of actually attacking us, to provoke American enmity. Delisting “french fries” from the menu at the Congressional restaurant counts as a severe reaction to relentless opposition to American interests. Canada has far less to fear.

At least, it has less to fear from America. It has a great deal to fear from retaining a government of kleptocrats.

Comments

[Bruce Allardice]

Anti-Americanism has always been an element in Canadian politics, and not always on the Liberal side. Sir John MacDonald, Canada's first (and arguably greatest) Prime Minister, always played the "American card" in order to get his Conservative Party's protectionist policies passed. He did this while hiring Americans to engineer and run his other pet project, the Canadian Pacific Railroad. At least "Sir John A." couched his argument in terms of Canadian-British patriotism, rather than crude anti-Americanism, a distinction I suspect the current crop of Canadian Liberals won't follow.

[Bruce Allardice]

And yet American Leftists, soul brothers to the Schroeders of the world, are the first to decry Americans who disdain foreign countries. For the Left, xenophobia is legitimate when directed against the U.S., but to be denounced otherwise.

I doubt Martin will himself raise the anti-U.S. cry. He won't need to, and if he did, he wouldn't be credible doing so (admittedly, who requires an anti-U.S. politician to be credible, or even sane?). There are plenty of Canadians in parliament and in the press who will do so.