Leadership across Borders

Some pundits point out the best US-Canadian relations occur when Democratic presidents overlap with Liberal prime ministers, and Republican presidents with Conservative ones. Yesterday we looked at examples and exceptions to this rule of thumb.

Others point to Canadians’ traditional affinity for Democratic rather than Republican administrations. John F. Kennedy used his popularity in Canada to help overturn a Conservative government and replace it with a more friendly Liberal one.

Yet party preference is not enough to explain Barack Obama’s current popularity in Canada. There is more at play: it has to do with an approach to the exercise of power.

In the movie Ben Hur, Pontius Pilate tells the hero, who has just refused the offer of Roman citizenship, “The grown man knows the world he lives in, and for the moment, that world is Rome.”

That is the position of Stephen Harper and others of his ilk in the Western world. They may not like certain aspects of US policy, but they believe that realpolitik gives them no choice. They must put their policies where the money and greater power is.

President Obama’s appeal for many Canadians and others outside the US, is not based solely on his youth or charisma, his being a Democrat or not being George Bush. It is because he represents a different approach to power.

He does not see the United States as Rome or himself as Emperor. He accepts the importance and the limitations of power: that the US must be prepared to lead in the world, and that it cannot go it alone. In accept this he is striving to make US leadership more consensual than his predecessors.

President Kennedy struck the same theme in his June 10, 1963 address to the graduating students at American University: “What kind of peace … do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced … by American weapons… Not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women.”

Canada appreciates this approach because of our penchant for diplomacy. As a decentralized federation, and as a medium sized country on the world stage, we do not have a big stick to brandish.

Our economy is a satellite in a continental and global field. And our international efforts, such as they are, have been achieved in concert with other nations seeking a consensus.

Hence our preference for multilateralism. Canada’s successful former prime ministers do not include a single one whose mark was made in the military decisive mode of leadership.

Our greatest leaders worked have been able to lead by persuasion, negotiation and the strength of their ideas.

That puts them and the new US President in the spirit of President. John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address and the line, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

May that be true of all of us.