Here's a Canada Day shoutout to our friends north of the 49th.
I wound up taking a North American history exam from the Globe and Mail, and made 10-10 on both Canadian and American sections. There were a couple where I knew the answers by process of elimination; it wasn't that I knew the right answer, but that I knew the other three answers were wrong. For instance, I knew that Harriet Beecher Stowe was American and that Jane Austin and Cherie Blair (I don't recall her being an author, but she's British either way; she's Tony Blair's wife) were British, thus leaving the unknown-to-me Suzanne Moodie as the Canadian author.
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On to a more meaty topic. Drudge linked to this study, where Canadians were asked of their most admired North American politicians, listing Clinton, Obama, McCain and the four major Canadian party leaders. Obama wound up winning, edging out Conservative PM Steven Harper 26%-21% with Hillary getting 16%. The rest of the Canadian party leaders followed, with the NDP's Jack Layton getting 9%, the Bloc Quebecois' Gil Duceppe getting 6%, Liberal boss Stephane Dion getting 5%. John McCain brought up the rear at 3%.
Who's getting more bad press, McCain or Dion? Iraq is even more of a dog in Canada than it is in the US, and McCain is likely associated with his support of the war, leading small-c conservatives north of the board to stick with Harper rather that lust after southern leadership.
Dion seems to be hitting rock bottom; even though the Liberals go toe-to-toe with the Conservatives in national polls (they were down 36-30 to the Tories in a Ipsos poll in June, but such things bobble around parity as of late), Dion gets little love from his fellow Canadians.
One disadvantage that Dion has is that he's had to actually run a parliamentary party rather than a presidential campaign; Dion gets poor marks in many quarters for his courteous abstention policy, having most Liberals not vote on key pieces of legislation and allowing the Conservatives to have a majority rather than forcing new elections where the Grits would lose seats. No guts, no glory, no votes in the poll.
In addition, Dion is far from the most charming party leader I've seen; he comes across as more of a technocrat. Not bad for a policy wonk or a mid-level cabinet minister, but a bit uninspiring as a party leader.
On the other hand, Obama and Clinton haven't had to vote on the hot button issues of the day in Canada or lead a party. Canadian votes can extrapolate how the charismatic Yanks would run things without getting disappointed on how Obama would deal with Quebec or how Clinton would deal with health care or how either would deal with the US; since they're blank slates from a Canadian perspective, they haven't done anything to tick Canadians off yet.
For Obama, he hasn't had much of an American record to tick Americans off, either. His voting record, a rather down-the-line liberal one, hasn't got much press. What get coverage is his skin tone, "Change You can Believe In" and the third-to-half billion dollars worth of change Obama can believe in as he skips federal funding for the general, a first for the post-Watergate system.
Canadians know Stephane Dion and prefer Obama. The average American thinks Stephane Dion is Celine's brother and prefers Obama. Neither know Obama that well... yet.
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