Canada’s interests in US elections? Please.

Here’s a dry twig to add to the bonfire of sorrows over last year’s presidential election. For a sitting president, securing votes in primaries and general elections beats any business and political relationship, even with Canada. “Even a good president’s feelings don’t count for much” should be stamped at the top of every fat memo about Canada’s geopolitical options.  

Barack Obama completed his historic presidency thinking as a Democratic politician: about his party’s interests, its allies, and its vanities about what’s best. The sweaty old pols were wrong. He didn’t overthink. He calculated and acted as a partisan president.

Being liberal-minded as well, Canadians decided eight years ago that Obama would be serving our interests when serving the “better angels” of America. If nothing happened, we’d accept that it wasn’t important or that our prime minister was on the wrong side ideologically—that, for instance, having a liberal across the table from another liberal would work wonders. It was gauche to raise structural issues: the asymmetry of economic and political power, the Democratic Party’s protectionist base, and the pesky fact that two-term presidents, like two-term prime ministers, usually become a touch arbitrary, and slightly bewitched by their power.

Canadians think about America’s future every day. And we hoped Obama would think sympathetically about us now and then. However, being a partisan in 2016, Obama spent his political capital strictly shoring up support for his party and his own presidency with US voters. Period.

Obama stopped promoting his own TPP trade deal with its enhanced trade terms for Canada and allies in Asia, and freed his candidate Hillary Clinton to campaign against it. He worked and dined with our new liberal Prime Minister several times through the year, without giving Canada any ground on softwood lumber quotas, or “Buy America” procurement practices, or even a down payment for the US half of the Gordie Howe International Bridge.  And, possibly of greater longer-term consequence, Obama never clearly championed the case for a common North American tax on carbon, a declaration that would have strengthened the credibility of Obama’s Paris agreement on Climate Change in Canada.

We can’t blame nasty 2016 for any of it.

It was hardly a bad year for Obama personally, or for America’s economy, or for the election prospects of his party, right through the first 10 happy months of the year. He didn’t trim his support for free trade or neglect Canada-US relations for a greater good: say, for instance, stopping a phony socialist or fascistic, vulgar amateur from winning the White House. His candidate Hillary Clinton was winning big, right up to their last joint campaign rally. Furthermore, until midsummer it was assumed that the Republicans would barely get their act together and would lose with a run-of-the-mill mainstream free trader or unelectable boor.

Yet again, Obama played US electoral politics to the hilt, without regard to friends in the bleachers.

Being ‘not normal’ after the election of Donald Trump

I know this is no time to complain about the blahs. Life on the planet altered last week. People are disoriented; nauseated with fear; or in a rage. Meanwhile, I just want to be left alone to clean up the kitchen.

My social and, indeed, my domestic life demand that before uttering his name I repeat: “I detest Trump, his court of bigots, and all the low-lifers that poison US politics.”  All of it I’ve said, sincerely, before offering harmless, even old-hat comments about reports on post-election mental activity.

But, surely I don’t have to keep sounding-off like a hairy old radical from the Sixties before speaking freely in this mellow country. After all, what would be the point of Canada without its signature mellow ways?

My fellow Canadians insist on remaining separate from the US because they prefer our less important, calmer politics. After he first visited Ottawa nearly 8-years ago, they weren’t thrilled, as I was, by the idea of actually voting to re-elect Barack Obama. But let’s not dig up that old bone! Sarcasm is a dead weapon in the age of Twitter.

Until I watch the Senate hearings on his Cabinet nominees and hear old Red’s Inaugural Address in January, I will admit to only one common pain with you: Barack Obama was an abnormally careful and trustworthy president. But, there was never going to be a third act. So, we’re all being hurled forward into an old world: a dangerous time, without a great American in the White House.

Quit! You’ll only lose your brand.

Every successful candidate—as well as most losing ones—for President of the United States attract “public intellectuals.” They offer their services as storytellers, media whisperers, and strategic thinkers. They make a difference; they help launch and sustain good and unforgettably terrible ideas as well. And they are rewarded richly in the best sense of the word: their exceptional brains work most brilliantly around power. They must, however, swim in one of two immense pools: the Republican and Democratic parties. The action is not on the beach with the independents.

The entry fee into these ponds has lightened; old-boy passports aren’t as valuable as they once were. Presidential politics today is an extremely competitive marketplace, with demanding investors who thrive in the vicious new meritocracy. So, merit should get you in.

Exiting is not as easy: it can cost you your name, career, and friendships. It raises a character question: Can you be trusted on any team?

“Loyalty” is not just a harmless pat on the back for dutiful service. The word imposes a sin tax on exit: being known as “disloyal.” Being loyal doesn’t get you a promotion or keep the business innovative or on its toes. It simply allows the institution to not worry about potential quitters 24–7. (Insights on the power of loyalty goes to Albert O. Hirschman's "Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States")

The above considerations partly explain why David Brooks in Time for a Realignment and avowedly partisan thinkers write passionately about the dislocation and movement of millions of voters, while largely sitting still themselves. Their squirming has generated entertaining and clever discussion—and we should appreciate that.

Joseph Nye, the liberal who coined the strategic panacea “soft power” hilariously excoriates Republican Donald Trump for being soft on Vladimir Putin and squeamish about committing US forces to any war to defend Lithuania. Conservative David Frum speaks soulfully about his dark night in the Republican Party. He chooses forthrightly to campaign against Donald Trump as a loyalist’s first step to unite conservative Republicans, later.

Their loyalty shouldn’t be overvalued. There’s another equally effective way to be intellectually and politically useful: quit.

Too little attention is paid to the virtue of picking up and leaving. America is great if only because America and it’s more timid northern cousin are populated by switchers and quitters, not only by those who keep their heads down, wait for bad times to pass, or hope that their bosses will wake up one day and stop treating them as soreheads and has-beens.

Think of those illustrious troublemakers insiders loathed at the time: Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive Party, René Lévesque and the Party Quebecois, and Preston Manning and Reform Party.

Singing the praises of the two-party system is an establishmentarian excuse for not rocking the boat amongst the brains at the top as well as amongst the “white trash” below decks. Throughout the modern communication age, the oldest parties have set the rules and acquired for themselves tremendous advantages to ward off revolts and new competition.

The privileged, of course, have done all this to make politics less corrupt and politicking more like a profession.

Yet, there’s no compelling evidence that breaking down the quasi-monopolistic advantages for Democrats and Republicans and Liberal and Conservative parties would lead to the chaotic fragmentation of our popular democracies. Insurgencies are eventually absorbed by both adaptive competitors and by an enduring preference by voters to give one party, not coalitions, decisive power to govern.

Malcontents serve new ideas within established parties. However, they only rouse themselves when there’s reasonable prospect that neglected constituencies will exercise their freedom to move on.

More “public intellectuals” should try it—light the way, so to speak. Real change needs them.