Quick Thoughts on the Oscars

This blog is about politics, law and international relations, but every now and again, I’ll lay down the law on other subjects of interests.  The Academy Awards qualifies, so here are a couple of quick thoughts:

1. Is it just me, or did the potential box office receipts for the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie drop precipitously with every musical number by host Hugh Jackman?  Once you’ve seen Jackman dance the Charleston, you start to lose interest, if not the outright ability to see him as the ultra-violent mutant superhero headlining the summer flick.

2. The success of Slumdog Millionaire was heartwarming and well deserved, but having personally seen the sort of slums which inspired the film  and yielded its principal child actors (albeit in parts of Africa, rather than India), I can only hope that the movie’s success makes a lasting change in the lives of those kids, and their families.   With luck, they and others will make it out, as a result.

Quick Thoughts on Obama’s Visit to Canada II

A couple more quick thoughts on Obama’s visit to Canada:

1. We are so white. For a multicultural society, it was glaring how homogenous our government representatives seemed to be during the televised portion of President Obama’s visit. From the time he arrived at Parliament Hill, every Canadian official within camera shot of the President, be they senators, ministers or aides, seemed to be older, white, and for the most part male. If it hadn’t been for the shots of the crowd welcoming him when his motorcade arrived, one might have thought the President was visiting Norway or Finland, not one of the most multicultural nations in the world. Hopefully, the private luncheon with the Ministers and government officials was more representative, otherwise I wonder what the President would have been thinking looking around. Oh well, at least Michele Jean met him at the airport…

2. The main difference between Stephen Harper and Barack Obama? As noted in the earlier post, there are many, but when you put the two leaders together, it’s striking how much more comfortable Obama seems to be in his skin than Harper. Particularly around the public, and to a lesser extent the press, Obama seems so much more at ease, receptive and friendly than Harper. It was also interesting to note the differences in their responses and answers to questions: the Prime Minister’s were competent and utilitarian, but in addition to displaying a command of the subject matter, President Obama’s comments also always circled back to the inherent personal element, talking about the effect on people’s lives.

3. Don’t get me wrong. Harper actually handled himself reasonably well. He’s no George W. Bush when he’s on the stump speaking – Bush always used to look like a hostage being forced to read a statement, whenever he spoke to the press – but Obama’s ability to empathize and connect with an audience really shone through in contrast to Harper’s style.

4. People are going to go wild over Obama’s statement that he loves Canada. Not to read his mind, but in addition to being great PR, it’s probably true. If I had to hazard a guess, Obama’s ideal vision of America probably strongly resembles Canada: An inclusive, multicultural society that boasts universal health care, well regulated financial institutions and a dimished level of political and societal rancor and tensions. It’s nice to be reminded of what we have, every now and again.

(Commentary) Harper Meets Obama – Awkward…

“It must have been cold there in my shadow”.

If you think it’s painful for me to exhume a line from a Bette Midler song (and an even worse movie) you’re right, but imagine how much worse it must be for Stephen Harper to be living it.  Let me get this straight: hundreds of people flocked to Ottawa just to try to catch a glimpse of the newly minted American President as he drove by, and a crowd of a couple a thousand gathered at the Parliament building even though there was almost no chance that they’d even see the President when he emerged from his motorcade?  Congratulations, Mr. Prime Minister, you’ve officially paled to insignificance in your own country.

Harsh? Not really.  But what could people expect?  Obama is a worldwide sensation, while Harper recently had to prorouge parliament just to prevent his government from being tossed out on its ear.  Now, Harper can’t begin to compete with Obama’s popularity, and no one could fairly expect him to, so what really stood out was how awkward Harper looked next to Obama.  From the moment the President emerged from his limousine, Stephen Harper just looked uncomfortable.  That probably wasn’t helped when Obama took the initiative to suggest that they wave to the Ottawa crowd.  The assembled onlookers went wild cheering for Obama, who looked cheerful and genuinely happy to see them.  For Harper, his awkward smile and perfunctory waving said it all: “can we go inside now?”  Again, that could be understood, given that everyone knew no one had come to see or, much less, was actually waving at the Prime Minister.

Obama’s Visit to Canada: A Conservative Caveat Emptor

President Obama’s upcoming visit to Canada has largely been viewed as the one piece of good news for the Conservatives in what was, undoubtedly, an otherwise punishing couple of weeks for Stephen Harper’s ruling party.  Granted, the threat of the Coalition has come to an end, but the Conservatives have been left clinging to power rather precariously, the Liberals are gaining strength and stature by the day, and the budget the Tories have brought forward can only be seen as a repudiation of any truly conservative philosophy.  In light of all of this, it is no wonder that most regard this week’s visit of the newly minted American President – his first foreign state visit, no less – as a much needed respite from the ill political winds blowing through Ottawa, and perhaps even a coup of sorts for the Harper government.

Not so fast.

At the Inauguration – January 20, 2009

Yes, I was at the inauguration.  I don’t need to specify, as you already know which one I’m talking about, but just to be clear:  I was fortunate enought to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44^th President of the United States last week, as one of the hundreds of Canadians who went to witness the end of the Bush era, and to see the dawn of the Obama administration.

What was it like, you might wonder?  In a word: phenomenal.  In a few more: pure, cheerful chaos.

Before I start, I should say that I wasn’t among the tour bus groups who went down for the ceremony (more on them later), but I’m impressed by those who did.  Driving for over 8 hours both ways shows commitment and determination, and all the more so for those who encountered other challenges along the way.  My brother went down on one such tour with a group of underprivileged youths from Toronto.  They were stopped and held for questioning at the U.S. border for over 6 hours when it was found that a few of the kids had Arab names and were headed toward the inauguration, demonstrating that while change may have indeed come to America, it will take a while for it to reach all corners of the country.  There was a happy ending to this story, though: While the group ended up having to drive through the night, missing their hotel reservations in the process, they did arrive just in time to go straight to the Mall and witness the inauguration ceremony.  Most importantly, all of them were able to eventually penetrate the border to do so, regardless of their names.

Coming to a Country Near You: My Mom the Vice President

            Now that the dust has had time to settle, what can be made of the Republicans choice of Sarah Palin?

 First off, and make no mistake about it, the selection of Palin as John McCain’s running mate, and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate was a political masterstroke (well, at least until she opened her mouth in recent interviews).  The move invigorated a heretofore moribund campaign, excited a previously unenthused base and even swung the polls McCain’s way, at least temporarily.  If anything, the stratagem may have worked too well, as up until the current financial crisis, and McCain’s bizarre ‘will he, or won’t he’ debate dance, Palin was clearly overshadowing the Republican Presidential nominee.  When their respective conventions concluded, it seemed the Democrats had OBAMA-Biden, while the Republican ticket was McCain-PALIN.

It’s safe to say that, at first, the move succeeded far beyond the wildest dreams of those who selected her, but what prompted the choice in the first place?  The lazy answer is that the Palin choice was a baldly political play for the women’s vote.  It’s wasn’t.  Yes, the Palin pick might well attract more women to the ticket, but that’s not really why it was made, nor, contrary to popular belief, was it to demonstrate McCain’s independence or maverick nature – though this made for a nice talking point.

In reality, first and foremost, the Palin pick was made to shore up the Republican base.  It’s not much of a secret that the groups comprising the bedrock of the Republican party’s grassroots support, social conservatives and the evangelical right, were less than enthused by the choice of McCain as the party’s standard bearer.  It’s safe to say they were probably even less impressed by McCain’s reported first choices for running mate, defrocked Democrat Joe Liberman and the pro-choice and decidedly moderate Tom Ridge.  Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is their kind of gal.  Socially conservative to a fault, steadfastly anti-abortion (to the point of refusing women the option of choice even in cases of incest or rape) and a devout born again Christian, her views are music to the ears of the hard right and a balm for their reservations about McCain, who is none of those things.  Selecting her did what months of carefully modulating his positions, surrounding himself with new advisors and making respectful entreaties to the right couldn’t:  it got the hard right fully behind the McCain candidacy.

But there were other reasons the choice was an inspired one, particularly from the view of the aforementioned hard right.  One is that the choice was clearly a thumb in the eye to a pair of longtime nemeses, the liberal women’s movement, and Hillary Clinton.  To state the obvious, Palin is not Clinton.  In point of fact, she’s about as close to the antithesis of Hillary as could be found; it would seem the only thing the two of them share is an extra X chromosome.  Instead, Palin is essentially the angry white guy’s ideal choice for a female political leader: she doesn’t put on airs, agrees with all of their positions and when she opens her mouth, she says everything they want to hear.  In short, this former beauty pageant contestant, and current moose hunting hockey mom is no threat to their worldview and says all of the things they’d like to be able to, with impunity.  A parallel can be found in the Republican response to Barak Obama’s 2006 run for the U.S. Senate, when the GOP ran the ultra right Alan Keyes, who also happened to be black, against Obama for the seat in question.  As one Republican strategist put it: ‘now we’ve got our own Harvard educated black guy’ in the race.  Another parallel would be the replacement of Thurgoode Marshall with equally black, but otherwise polar opposite, Clarence Thomas, on the U.S. Supreme Court by the first President Bush.

One can almost hear the hard right chortling: now we’ve got our own woman candidate, and she says and thinks things WE like.  Making the Palin choice especially satisfying had to be the way it neatly upstaged longtime nemesis Hillary Clinton, seizing from her the mantle of historical candidacy which she’d earned in the bruising Democratic primary.  In doing so, the Palin pick also went a long way toward correcting the impression that the Republicans were simply on the wrong side of history in the 2008 race.  To be the ‘other’ party essentially pushing to maintain the status quo, while the Democrats first engaged in a historic primary between the first viable female and African American presidential nominees, and then actually nominated the first visible minority presidential candidate in the history of the two central political parties, was starting to have an air of trying to hold back the tide of progress and history.  Palin allows them to claim that their ticket, too, is historic.  The ability to then be able to deride any and all critics of the Palin choice as sexist was undoubtedly another delicious irony and an added bonus from the conservative point of view.

Moreover, Palin is in many ways a perfect foil for Obama.  Her smart ass, ‘regular gal’ persona helps to reinforce the label of Obama as an elitist, and the contrast between them neatly deflates his high minded rhetoric when the two are put side by side.  When she attacks Obama, as with the series of gibes at his past as a community organizer, the effect is like Martin Luthor King Jr. being accosted by Rosanne Barr.  The whole situation seems so bizarre that in the face of the earthy jabs, there’s no room for serious debate and elevated oratory suddenly seems badly out of place.  Further, any criticisms of her lack of experience invite similar attacks on Obama.

Still, even in the face of all of these political advantages, one can’t help but feel that the choice of Palin wasn’t completely thought through.  It’s not just that the whole thing sounds eerily like the plot of a bad Disney movie – you know the type; entitled something like ‘My Mom, The President’, where the down to earth hockey mom somehow ends up as President and sets the country and the world straight with her winning personality, and a few hokey dance numbers thrown in for good measure.  As an aside, the American preference for wanting a leader who strikes them as a ‘regular guy’ has always seemed a little bizarre.  By definition, no one who rises to the level of Presidential, or even Vice-Presidential, candidate is remotely close to being “regular folks”, whatever that is. Frankly, in what other capacity of high responsibility than politics would the public even avow a preference for anything less than the smartest and best qualified person, anyway?  I think it’s pretty safe to say most of us don’t want a brain surgeon because they are plucky and have a can-do attitude.  We want the smartest and most capable person we can find, and they’d better have extensive experience and have received no shortage of training directly relevant to what they will have to do.  It goes without saying that even being a neurosurgeon is a position of considerably less responsibility than that of President or Vice President.  But I digress.

No, the reason the Palin choice, as politically brilliant as it is breathtakingly cynical and irresponsible, doesn’t strike one as being fully thought through (other than the recent interview fiascos) is that it has undoubtedly made her the heart of the party going forward.  Obviously, if the Republican ticket wins, she will be the Vice President to the oldest U.S. President, upon initial inauguration, in history.  Suppose John McCain falls down and breaks his hip?  She could very well end up as president.  Even if he was to serve out his term, Palin would be the presumptive nominee thereafter.  If the Democrats prevail, then Palin would again be the clubhouse leader for the Republican nomination in the next election cycle.  So it appears that the Republicans really are offering up change, as a woman will be in one way or another the leader of their party in the near future.   Given their history, that isn’t just a change, it’s a sea change, and an exciting and laudable one at that.  That’s why it’s pretty clear this really wasn’t thought through: despite all of the advantages of the Palin selection, it appears that the Republicans are going to get more than they bargained for out of this hockey mom. 

I can hear the Disney music now.