Reading the coverage of the Canadian election in the american media
makes me sick. The unabashed support for Harper would make you
think that the Conservatives would be the obvious choice of any
"thinking" Canadian. I especially like the frequent dismissal of the
NDP as "left-wing" -- as if this appendage was sufficient to relegate
Jack Layout to the outer reaches of the political spectrum with the
commie-pinko terrorist party. And I especially cringe when I read
how Canadians apparently turned their backs on the Liberals because
they wanted to select a leader who could "repair the relationship with
the US". Hello? Canada-American relations didn't factor as
an issue in the campaign -- other than that all leaders went to great
lengths to distance themselves from it. Even Stephen Harper wrote
a pointed letter to a Boston paper that tried to paint him as GW's new
best friend. Somehow this belief that Harper was swept into an
underwhelmingly tiny minority on a wave of pro-American sentiment has
stuck. I can't help but think that there's this pathetic little
hope that "maybe the new guy will like us more now that the rest of the
world has stopped coming over to play". There's only one way to
improve Canadian-American relations: regime change.