It was written by a Canadian
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin simply doesn’t have the spine to make an impression on a man like Bush. Martin spends so much time dithering and agonizing over decisions that he never gets around to actually leading (or, one would imagine deciding what he’d like for lunch)—a characteristic that can be no more endearing to a strong leader like Bush than it is to frustrated Canadians. So, any extra togetherness time for the two heads of state is not going help matters.
And then there are Canadians themselves who, while for the most part a polite and well-behaved people, are simply pathological when it comes to Americans.
I’m not sure what it is exactly. Maybe Canadians fear the United States’ success and power; maybe they suffer from a profound inferiority complex that manifests itself in snide remarks about shotgun-toting American idiots who spend their lives at the mall. (The tendency to mix American stereotypes in unlikely ways is strangely prevalent here.) But whatever the nature of the problem, many Canadians simply have no time for the United States. No time, that is, except for those occasions when they’re reading American books, watching American television shows, seeing American movies, perusing American magazines, eating American-produced food, shopping in American chain stores or wintering in America. But hey, they still reserve the right to be hostile about the U.S. when asked.
So I can’t see that President Bush’s diplomacy tour is going to do much for his opinions of Canada or vice versa.
In anticipation of Dubya’s visit, Carolyn Parrish, the aforementioned judgment-challenged Member of Parliament, recently popped up on a Canadian television show throwing a George Bush action figure on the ground, then grinding it under her heel. The rest.
