Canadians find Romney's belief in the free market touchingly quaint.
by Geoffrey Stevens
If Canadians could participate in tomorrow’s US presidential election, their votes would surely go overwhelmingly to Barack Obama.
This notwithstanding the fact that his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has closer ties to this country — both as a native of the border state of Michigan and as the leading member of a family that has vacationed for 60 years in a pretty white cottage on the Canadian side of Lake Huron. (It was to this cottage at Grand Bend, Ontario, that Mitt and his family were heading in 1984 when he strapped their Irish setter in a crate on the roof of the car — a travel option that does not sit well with dog lovers in either country.)
The Canadian and US governments tend to be more in sync when their leaders hail from the same end of the political spectrum.
Compared to Romney, Obama is relatively popular among Canadians, even though he has not done much in his four years to make Canadians enthusiastic about his administration. His relations with Stephen Harper are cordial but not warm. The two leaders are too different in personality, philosophy and approach to governing to enjoy more than an arm’s length relationship. But they work together when they need to — to bail out the auto industry, for example.
The two governments tend to be more in sync when their leaders hail from the same end of the political spectrum (witness Liberal Jean Chrétien and Democrat Bill Clinton or, earlier, those “Irish eyes” soul mates, Conservative Brian Mulroney and Republican Ronald Reagan). Relations can be distant, even testy, when the leaders come from different ends of the spectrum (Liberal Pierre Trudeau and Republican Richard Nixon, for example, or Chrétien and Republican George W Bush, who resented Chrétien’s refusal to enlist in his war on Iraq).
I’m not convinced the outcome on Tuesday will make much difference here.
Overall, the Canadian electorate tends to be more liberal (or moderate) than the American one, hence a preference for Democrats to Republicans — and for Obama rather than Romney. But I’m not convinced the outcome on Tuesday will make much difference here.
Romney takes a more muscular approach than to foreign policy and military issues than Canadians may be comfortable with, even if the “muscle” seems to be mostly rhetoric for campaign consumption. Romney’s abiding faith in private enterprise is touchingly quaint to Canadians who are accustomed to activist governments, while Obama’s interventionist approach to health care and direct government involvement in the economy are closer to the Canadian tradition than Romney’s strategy of federal disengagement from social programs.
Aside from pipelines and energy exports, bilateral Canada-US issues have been almost entirely absent from in the presidential campaign. Everyone knows or assumes that, whoever wins, TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline will get built and oil and natural gas will continue to flow south in copious quantities.
It looks increasingly as though Obama, having survived a scare of his own making, will manage to hang on to his job. He can thank Hurricane Sandy for giving him a reason to return to the White House where he could be seen to be acting presidential in the face of a natural catastrophe.
In crucial Ohio, the trend is clearly to Obama where he now leads by nearly three points in the aggregated polls.
Whatever the reason, his slow slide in the polls came to a halt last week. A week ago, Real Clear Politics, a website that aggregates the major national polls, had Romney ahead by 47.9 to 47.0 per cent in the popular vote. As of yesterday, Obama had moved into a tiny lead – 47.5 to 47.3. The size of the lead matters less than the trend. In crucial Ohio, the trend is clearly to Obama where he now leads by nearly three points in the aggregated polls.
In Columbus, Ohio, the Dispatch newspaper published its final pre-election poll yesterday, showing Obama with a two-point lead. That was enough, in the newspaper’s view, to give Obama a precarious “firewall” to hold Romney off from victory in the Electoral College.
As for Canada, an Obama victory would enable the country to continue to fly below the Washington radar in a relationship that would remain close without being too close. There are worse outcomes than that.
About Geoffrey Stevens
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at the address below. This article appeared in the Waterloo Region Record and the Guelph Mercury.
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