Toward a theory of Canadian exceptionalism

Last week, an eminent American industrialist who is an old friend, a proud veteran of the U.S. Navy, a patriotic but very reasonable and moderate citizen and a respecter of all other serious nationalities (including Canada), visited me and volunteered that he is in a state of despair about his country.

He referred to a recent debate at the Aspen Institute, which he attended, between historian Niall Ferguson and former presidential aide David Gergen over the now almost faddish subject of American "decline." Ferguson, who is virtually an itinerant industry of opinion and scholarly advocacy unto himself, spoke of an imminent and very steep dip in America's fortunes. David Gergen, who makes no claim to as broad an academic background, but was a close adviser to the last U.S. presidents who could be described as successful (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton), made the case that the United States is still by some margin the most powerful country. Both men are both substantially correct, and were not really debating the same issue at all, just soliloquizing on related subjects.

My visitor lamented that "We don't have a president. We have a resident in the president's house." I am afraid he underestimates the capacities of the incumbent to continue to squander his country's position in the world. Of course, these are themes that have been much bandied about, including in this space, but the Syrian shambles, the naïve handling of relations with Iran and the acute contentiousness over Obamacare's formal launch have all brought the discussion to a new and more hoary head.

This administration has the seriously annoying habit of trying to generate a celebration of the end, or impending end, of inherited crises that are in fact far from over, so they can masquerade as authors of solutions to problems created by predecessors. Worst of all was the unbelievable effort to pretend that the murder of the American ambassador in Benghazi was not a premeditated terrorist act but a spontaneous Libyan popular reaction to an anti-Islamist video by an American kook, as explained by the then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to the world's Muslims, whose bewilderment at the message may only be imagined.

In the last few weeks, the usual beaters and criers for the Obama regime in the media, led by the New York Times, foretold a new dawn in relations with a moderate and co-operative Iran miraculously returned to its senses, another fable that dissolved with the new Iranian president's failure even to shake hands with the President of the United States. (Old-timers will remember the impact of the refusal of John Foster Dulles — Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration — to shake hands with Chou En-lai at Geneva in 1954. Chou was still fuming about this when Richard Nixon visited him in 1972.)

The evidence of the collapse of American prestige is everywhere, in the failures of its diplomacy, the retrenchment of its military, in its unending mountainous budgetary deficits, and in the anecdotal indications of how absurd and insane daily life is becoming, with frequent random massacres of people and a completely divided political culture reduced to the most sterile and intemperate repetitions of irreconcilable differences.

Admittedly, George W. Bush certainly had taken the country a good way down the slippery slope to being a financially incontinent laughing stock, flailing about in hopeless nation-building at the ends of the earth as the American economy melted down, not so much from private greed, as the political class chanted in unison, as from the public policy errors of both parties.

© 2024 Conrad Black