Yes, We Can (Even If They Can't)
President Obama's imminent visit to Canada presents Canadian conservatives with a great danger and a great opportunity.
The danger:
Obama is pushing the United States hard to the left. He is spending massively. He is funding costly green energy programs. He is tightening the regulation of U. S. businesses and redistributing income. All these moves will excite and embolden the Canadian left -- and generate intense pressures on the Harper government to follow.
Half a century ago, the Canadian press swooned over John F. Kennedy and demanded their very own magic prince in the form of Pierre Trudeau. As Allan Fotheringham wrote in his obituary for Trudeau:
Pierre Trudeau, the politician, could not have existed without the existence of John Kennedy. In 1961, when JFK entered the White House, Canadians as much as Americans were intrigued by this new creation -- a pol so different from the usual selection of fuddy-duddies. Rich, casual, witty, a beautiful young wife: he held so much promise and made it all fun. Canadians were jealous, understandably.
Barack Obama is not rich yet, nor is he especially witty. Michelle Obama is no more beautiful than Laureen Harper. (Nor is it obvious why the attractiveness of a leader's wife is any guide to the leader's merits. Marriage to Carla Bruni has not improved Nicolas Sarkozy's work, to put it mildly.) But expect the trick that was so successfully played in the 1960s to be tried again in the 2000s.
The opportunity:
Barack Obama's presidency is already going seriously wrong. His own administration concedes that their trillion-dollar stimulus plan will create few new jobs in the next 18 months. Public support for the huge plan is plummeting. And meanwhile Obama has neglected the single most urgent and important challenge facing the United States and the world: fixing the broken American banking system.
The contrast between Obama's ideology-first, results-last leadership and the cautious pragmatism of Stephen Harper's government shows strongly now, and will look only more impressive in the months ahead. As David Gratzer wrote on the Web site I edit, FrumForum.com, no Western government has responded to the financial crisis more responsibly than Harper's. Here's a simple checklist:
-Agree with spending money now, but in a more restrained manner.
-No to massive spending commitments years into the future.
-No to any new entitlements.
-Cut taxes across the board.
-Try to keep the GDP-debt ratio relatively constant over the next half decade.
By contrast, Obama is spending money lavishly -- but most of the money will not reach its destination until fall at the earliest. He and his advisors rejected the one idea that could have delivered money faster: temporary suspension of the Social Security payroll tax, a measure that could have put up to $120 per week extra spending money into the hands of every U. S. worker. This measure could literally have been put into effect by this coming Monday.
Instead, Obama has committed the United States to a series of major obligations that will be very difficult to rescind when the crisis is over, including a huge increase in federal responsibility for the troubled Medicaid program.
Obama's plans envision a huge expansion in the burden of debt upon the U. S. economy over the next four years: at least $3-trillion more atop the existing $10-billion-plus.
As the U. S. economy stumbles forward from today's crisis, the Obama administration will have to raise taxes to finance permanently higher spending and crushingly higher debt.
Canada, by contrast, will be able to end its temporary spending as the crisis passes --and finance more modest debts with lower taxes.
There's a real possibility that Canadian conservatives over the next years will be able to reduce many Canadian tax rates below the rate prevailing in the United States. To borrow a phrase, that would be an accomplishment of which Americans would be jealous, understandably.
So disregard the coming week's hype. It's Ottawa, not Washington, that has met this crisis best -- and it is the taciturn Canadian, not the eloquent American, who can most truly be said to offer hope and positive change.
Originally published in the National Post.