Interesting reading....
PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
IDN: 082340175
DATE: 2008.08.21
PAGE: A17 (ILLUS)
BYLINE: NORMAN SPECTOR
SECTION: Comment
EDITION: Metro
DATELINE:
WORDS: 696
WORD COUNT: 723
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NO-SHOW POLITICS Why Obama won't visit Canada: There's no point
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NORMAN SPECTOR
nspector@globeandmail.com Pressed by reporters to justify his nine-day, rock star-like tour of the Middle East, Afghanistan and Europe, Barack Obama said he was simply following the post-primaries path of John McCain. Plus, he noted for good measure, his Republican opponent had been to Canada.
Could this have been a signal that Mr. Obama plans to visit us after he's formally nominated? I think not: He had good reason not to venture north in July, and those reasons have since become more salient.
When I asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper a couple of weeks ago why he thought Mr. Obama had skipped Canada, he said we have a branding problem in the United States. Perhaps, but the "reverse squeaky wheel" phenomenon, as he put it, did not stop Mr. McCain from popping in. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, must have concluded that a visit would not enhance his electoral prospects - even though there's more than enough anti-Bush sentiment up here to have matched the enthusiastic welcome he received in Germany and France. Indeed, with the short hop across the border and no time-zone problem, U.S.
media would have turned out in even greater numbers for the visit.
Some might attribute Mr. Obama's no-show to Mr. Harper's leading a conservative government. But both Germany and France elected right-of-centre governments, and became more pro-American, during the supposedly dark days of the Bush administration. Nor would the first-rate report by our diplomats in Chicago that outed Mr. Obama on NAFTA explain his travel plans. That kerfuffle was more prominent on our side of the border; besides, it's now the stuff of late-night comedy shows that Mr. Obama is a politician who can temporize with the best (or worst) of them.
Mr. Obama now says he would not reopen NAFTA unilaterally, but his advisers may have been paying attention when Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson suggested Canada would have its own issues, including energy, to bring to the table. Tellingly, while choosing his words carefully, the Prime Minister indicated to me that, under certain conditions, his government would welcome Chinese investment in Alberta's oil sands. With the United States consuming a quarter of the world's oil while possessing less than 3 per cent of its reserves, a public statement along these lines could be a real problem for Mr. Obama. How sensitive is he on fuel prices? In one week this summer, he reversed his position on tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, softened his opposition to offshore drilling and proposed a windfall profits tax on the oil companies.
A visit to Canada by Mr. Obama - for whom Iraq is the bad war and Afghanistan the right one in fighting the "war on terrorism" - could accentuate his perceived inexperience in foreign and defence policy. Both wars featured lightning victories followed by insufficient troops on the ground to stabilize the situation. Eventually, however, the U.S. poured more troops into Iraq - an extremely unpopular decision that Mr. Obama opposed and Mr. McCain supported. Partly as a result of that surge, the U.S. no longer faces any significant organized military foe in Iraq.
Today, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain agree that more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan. But Mr. Obama affirmed during the European leg of his trip that he would be able to persuade NATO allies to match the U.S. increase because he represents a sharp change from the Bush era. Yet, Mr. Harper, who could be facing an election at any time, would have to shut the door firmly if asked during an Obama visit whether he would be prepared to revisit the parliamentary vote to end our Afghan mission in 2011.
To date, U.S. media have not reported widely on our decision to pick up and leave regardless of conditions on the ground. But that would change were Mr. Obama to visit. With the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan continuing to deteriorate - and with NATO also exposed as a paper tiger in Eastern Europe - don't count on seeing him in Canada before the presidential election.
