Today, as Matt Yglesias earlier reminded us amnesiac Americans, is Canada Day–the Canadian parallel, though not exact, to our Independence Day.
I confess that I am an inveterate Canadaphile, and not for such ideological reasons as its health care system or the striking fact that even its current conservative leaders have chosen to mark this Canada Day with apologies to its aboriginal population. No, it’s the basic decency, civility, and sense of humor of most Canadians that has long attracted me. And their highly sophisticated knowledge of our own political system has always put us to shame.
Back in 2000, our then-Ambassador to Canada Gordon Giffin (an old friend) arranged for me to speak about Al Gore’s policy views to an Ottawa meeting of deputy ministers–the people who more or less ran the Canadian government. They asked far better questions–and not just on issues affecting Canada–than you’d probably get from anything like a similar audience in the U.S.
It’s been a few years since I’ve had an opportunity to go north of the border, but I miss it, from PEI to BC. I wish all our friends and neighbors there a very happy Canada Day.
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Yeah, Canada is great. I wonder how many Bush refuges will move back if Obama wins? And for all you people who think Canada is some progressive utopia like Michael Moore claims, you should have heard the uproar today when Henry Morgenthaler, the crusader for abortion rights in Canada, was awarded the Order of Canada. It does say something that he was given the award, but the social conservatives North of the border came out of their bunkers today with this announcement. Moreover, Canada has consistently refused to grant refugee status to American soldiers who have fled North in hopes of avoiding going to Iraq. The Canada of Stephen Harper is far from the Canada of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, apologies to First Nations people notwithstanding.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
Yeah, Canada is great. I wonder how many Bush refuges will move back if Obama wins? And for all you people who think Canada is some progressive utopia like Michael Moore claims, you should have heard the uproar today when Henry Morgenthaler, the crusader for abortion rights in Canada, was awarded the Order of Canada. It does say something that he was given the award, but the social conservatives North of the border came out of their bunkers today with this announcement. Moreover, Canada has consistently refused to grant refugee status to American soldiers who have fled North in hopes of avoiding going to Iraq. The Canada of Stephen Harper is far from the Canada of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, apologies to First Nations people notwithstanding.