Fouad Ajami has a typically brilliant op-ed in the WSJ on global attitudes towards America. The release of the Pew Global Attitudes poll earlier this month, Ajami writes, is an “annual ritual” of self-flagellation for liberals, comparable to the Shi’ite tradition of Ashura, in which men cut themselves as an act of penance in remembrance of their ancestors’ suffering. Ajami contextualizes the age-old phenomenon of anti-Americanism (it did not begin — nor will it end — with George W. Bush), demonstrating why it is not only over-exaggerated, but fundamentally mischievous and irrational.
Ajami’s column is especially relevant in light of John McCain’s recent day-long jaunt to Ottawa, in which he delivered a strong, pro-free trade speech to the Economic Club of Toronto and contrasted his position on trade with the quasi-protectionism of his opponent. I happened to be in Canada last week, and I followed press coverage of this speech closely. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s establishment paper, assured its readers that the Senator is “No One to be Afraid Of,” and concluded Friday’s event represented an “historic attempt to reach out to our country with his unprecedented mid-campaign visit,” and that McCain “proved to be anything but the George W. Bush clone he is sometimes dismissed as on this side of the border.”
So where are the jubilant headlines and American editorialists swooning over how McCain sets foreigners’ hearts aflutter? To say that such a story doesn’t fit the media narrative for this presidential campaign would be redundant at this point. Yet no amount of positive press should undermine the fact that Barack Obama remains far more popular amongst Canadians — despite his talk of renegotiating NAFTA, a sacred cow in Canadian politics. Obama’s voguishness is spelled out by a poll commissioned by the Globe and Mail, which found that the overwhelming majority of Canadians prefer Barack Obama to John McCain, 55 percent to 15 percent.
This does not come as a shock. Canada’s political and intellectual class is deeply anti-American and makes a part-time job of sneering at us for being a brutish, militaristic people, all while they continue to suffer a decades-long brain drain as their best and brightest flock here for education and jobs. So why do Canadians support Barack Obama? For the most shallow of reasons. Writes columnist John Ibbitson:
On the face of it, this makes no sense. Self-interested Canadians should probably be backing the Republicans in this election. Mr. McCain defends and supports free trade, while Mr. Obama has vowed to renegotiate or even rip up the North American free-trade agreement. Mr. McCain came to Canada in the middle of an election campaign to make exactly that point to American voters.
Ibbitson goes onto describe why a protectionist president and a protectionist Congress would be awful for Canada. So what explains his countrymen’s love affair with the junior senator from Illinois?
Mr. Obama epitomizes the multicultural present that Canada celebrates. While we are stuck with an uninspiring assortment of mostly middle-aged white males to lead our country, Americans are contemplating electing a Kenyan-American who has an Indonesian-American half-sister who is herself married to a Chinese-Canadian doctor. Mr. Obama shouldn’t belong to the United States. He should belong to us.
Something tells me that the thrill of having a “Kenyan-American who has an Indonesian-American half-sister who is herself married to a Chinese-Canadian doctor” will probably start to wear off once President Obama hunkers down to renegotiate NAFTA.
