Pubdate: Sun, 09 Feb 2004
Source: Maclean's Magazine (Canada)
Copyright: 2004 Maclean Hunter Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.macleans.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/253
Author: Jonathon Gatehouse

CANADIANS TO BUSH: HOPE YOU LOSE, EH

According To A New Poll, Only 15 Per Cent Of Us Would Vote For The President

Maybe it's that smug little smile.

His penchant for fantastically expensive military photo-ops. Or the 
swaggering, belt-hitching walk that cries out for a pair of swinging saloon 
doors. And though, God knows, we have too many of our own syntactically 
challenged politicians to be casting stones, shouldn't the leader of the 
free world know that "misunderestimate" isn't a word?

Yes, we're cavilling, but clearly there is something about George W. Bush 
that gets under the skin of Canadians. After all, vehemently disagreeing 
with the policies of American presidents is almost a national pastime.

There has to be another explanation for our extreme reaction, the desire 
afoot in the land to see him turfed from office. That and the unprintable 
sentiment about him and the horse he rode in on. Even before we know whom 
he will be running against this fall, Canadians have made their decision.

Only 15 per cent, according to an exclusive new Maclean's poll, would 
definitely cast a ballot for Bush if they had the opportunity. And if 
Americans remain almost evenly divided -- some 50 per cent approve of his 
performance in the White House and he's running neck and neck with his 
likely Democratic challengers -- there is no such dithering on this side of 
the border.

Just 12 per cent of us feel Canada is better off since he took office, and 
only a third of respondents will admit to liking the world's most powerful 
man, even just a little bit.

It's an antipathy that appears to extend far beyond our traditional 
coolness towards Republicans, says Michael Marzolini, chairman of Pollara 
Inc., the Toronto-based opinion research firm that conducted the national 
survey.

With a political spectrum that skews to the left of America's -- legalized 
same-sex marriage and the promise of looser marijuana laws being the most 
recent, and in some quarters, celebrated examples -- we've generally 
perceived Democratic presidents as being more in tune with our values.

But where Ronald Reagan and Bush the elder were at least grudgingly 
respected, Dubya is decidedly not.

Despite a spate of polls showing a broad desire for improved relations with 
the United States after the often rocky Chretien years, there is a sense 
that this administration isn't one we want to do business with. "These 
numbers really show the difficulty for Paul Martin," says Marzolini, the 
long-time pollster for the federal Liberal party. "He has to get closer to 
the Americans, but he can't get too close to George Bush. It's a fine 
balance." The intense sympathy Canadians felt following the attacks of 9/11 
- -- something that manifested itself not just in acts of mourning and 
charity, but in a willingness to support whatever actions the U.S. deemed 
necessary -- has dissipated. In its place is a deep dislike of the 
bellicose new global reality, and a lingering distrust of Bush's motives.

It's evident even within sight of the frontier.

Stopping to take a picture of icy Niagara Falls on a recent frigid day, 
Mike Mitreveski tried to explain why he's uneasy about Bush. "I get a sense 
that he's in it for himself first and then the country," said the Windsor, 
Ont., graduate student. "And I worry that he's doing all of this stuff in 
Iraq for the oil industry.

He used to be part of it and has lots of high-ranking friends." David 
Kowalewski, an engineering consultant from Niagara Falls, Ont., says he 
initially supported Bush's foreign policy, but now has grave doubts. "I 
thought it was noble at first, but now they've gone security crazy." Life 
has changed for the worse in his community, said Kowalewski, citing long 
delays at the border, and the fallout for local businesses that depend on 
tourism.

A trio of physicians taking in the sights on a day off were no kinder to 
Bush. On sober reflection, all asked that their names not be used. "Please, 
someone, teach him how to pronounce nuclear," said one, a Toronto 
pediatrician. Another, an American who has lived on this side of the border 
for the past 14 years, said she understands why Canadians dislike so many 
of Bush's stances, even though she is troubled by the tone of the debate.

A doctor friend from the Netherlands provided a reminder that opinions of 
the President are often even harsher abroad. "In Amsterdam," she said, "we 
think he is kind of stupid."

On the humid night in August 2000 when George W. Bush officially became the 
Republican nominee for president, the thousands of delegates and reporters 
packed into a Philadelphia arena were given a peek at what party 
strategists planned to sell to the American people.

The beautifully realized infomercial was mostly shots of Bush at his 
Crawford, Tex., ranch, tending stock, mending fences, driving a vintage 
pickup truck with his spaniel perched on his lap, all the while talking 
about his vision of a big country with small-town values.

It was a persona lifted straight from a Hollywood Western. The likeable, 
soft-talking cowpoke who knows the value of an honest day's work and isn't 
afraid to take on the guys in the black hats when the town's in trouble. 
Reagan successfully mined the same vein for eight years.

And it's an image that continues to pay dividends for Bush, playing off his 
folksy, good-natured strengths, and positioning him as someone who might 
reasonably be excused for not reading newspapers or knowing the names of 
his foreign counterparts. Clearing brush on the back forty is a lot more 
man-of-the-people than weekending at the palatial family compound in 
Kennebunkport, Me.

But Canadians have never been that comfortable with the type of cowboys who 
take the law into their own hands.

Our frontier heroes were the scarlet-clad North West Mounted Police, not 
lone gunslingers. In a pre-9/11 world, when Bush was vowing to be a 
domestic-policy president, it didn't seem to matter that much. But over the 
past 2 1/2 years, his muscular commitment to protecting and advancing U.S. 
interests abroad -- unilaterally if allies and international bodies such as 
the UN fail to sign on -- has unsettled many around the world.

There is a burgeoning cottage industry of writers and analysts exploring 
the underpinnings and fallout of this new American "imperialism." In 
Canada, a country that has always fretted about being swallowed up, either 
territorially or culturally, by the behemoth to the south, the spectre of 
an expanding American Empire feeds a deep-seated paranoia.

At least for some.

David Frum, the Canadian author and pundit who spent 13 months working as a 
speech writer for Bush -- he is credited with co-authorship of the infamous 
"axis of evil" line -- says he doesn't believe polls that suggest a yawning 
chasm between American and Canadian perceptions of the President. "My 
contention is that the differences are much less dramatic than they are 
usually made out to be," he says. And if Bush is held in less esteem north 
of the border, adds Frum, it is largely because of the distorted lens the 
public sees him through. "The Canadian media have generally taken a very 
belittling approach to him. By and large, they do not take the terror 
problem very seriously, and they communicate that to public opinion."

Canadians might understandably prefer presidents who are reluctant to flex 
their global political power, either economically or militarily, says Frum, 
but when it comes to things that really matter, we should have the good 
grace to at least not stand in the way. "There's no expectation in 
Washington that Canada and the U.S. should agree on every issue. But they 
do, as a friend, expect to be given the benefit of the doubt on issues that 
they regard as essential to their security."

It's a point of view that many Canadians find difficult to swallow, given 
the dubious claims of weapons of mass destruction and hostile intentions 
that fuelled America's foray into Iraq. (The Maclean's annual year-end poll 
found that 75 per cent of Canadians believe Ottawa was right to refuse to 
commit troops to Iraq, even if it annoyed our closest trading partner.) 
Yes, we're friends and neighbours, but with feelings running so high, there 
is a danger that our distaste for the leader will spill over to the people 
he represents.

Clifford Krauss, Canadian correspondent for the New York Times, recently 
encountered two young boys on the street outside his Toronto home, holding 
a sign that read Honk if you hate President Bush! (This is a school 
project.) "I was shocked because of the word hate," says Krauss. "You'd 
never see a sign like that about Saddam Hussein, or Slobodan Milosevic." 
It's a virulent strain of anti-Americanism that the Times reporter says he 
encounters more and more frequently. "I've experienced rude and prejudiced 
behaviour, just because I'm an American," says Krauss. "I've lived in 
countries in Latin America that have tricky relationships with the U.S., 
but I didn't expect that sort of thing here."

Truth is, we might well be the ones in need of a dose of perspective. With 
the Canadian political landscape now virtually emptied of leaders we feel 
passionately about -- either negatively or positively -- we might be guilty 
of transference. Our growing distaste for Bush is smug and more than a bit 
juvenile, argues Reginald Stuart, a Mount Saint Vincent University expert 
on U.S.-Canada relations, now in residence at Washington's Woodrow Wilson 
International Center. "When the Communists were in power, we dealt with 
Russian leaders that we disagreed vehemently with on some very fundamental 
issues," he notes.

Our worries that the Bush administration, viewed by the bulk of the 
Canadian public as overly religious and conservative, will somehow 
interfere with progressive social policies in this country (the Maclean's 
year-end poll identified same-sex marriage and proposals to relax marijuana 
laws as new "wellsprings of national pride") are overblown, says Stuart. In 
Canada, there is still no surer kiss of death for a politician than caving 
into American pressure.

For decades now, we have alternately railed against, and revelled in, the 
generalized American ignorance of Canada. At the same time, we have prided 
ourselves on being one of our neighbour's harshest critics.

At the centre of our relationship is the conceit that so much of what we 
produce -- resources, goods, culture, people -- flows south, that America 
must really need us. Now, with the U.S. showing a willingness to stand 
alone and demand the obeisance due to the last remaining superpower, 
Canada, like the rest of the world, is caught up in an uncomfortable new 
reality.

Bush's repeated "with us or against us" declarations have made it clear 
that there are new, tougher requirements for being America's ally. And as 
long as he remains well-positioned for another four years in the White 
House, we may have to do our share of puckering up. Canadians know that. We 
just don't have to like it.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman