Article content continued

No Canadian leader ever had higher credibility with an American administration than Brian Mulroney, and Canada gained from that. Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney were by far the most highly regarded foreign leaders in Washington at that time, and when Mrs. Thatcher retired in 1990, that left Mulroney without a rival. (Both spoke at Reagan’s state funeral, by request of the deceased, the first time any such occurrence had happened.)

Mindful of the problems between Trudeau and Reagan, and of the domestic political backlash against Mulroney’s popularity in the White House, Jean Chrétien was correct but not close with the Clinton administration, and visited 34 capitals before he got round to Washington. But Clinton graciously demolished the separatist argument at a conference on federalism that Chrétien convened at Mont Tremblant in October, 1999. Stephen Harper also had correct but not at all intimate relations with Washington. Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama seemed to be soulmates: they were both environment crusaders, traditional believers in redistributing money, and doffing their caps at anything that was politically correct, ever on the lookout for new categories of victims to identify and reward.

Photo by Geoff Robins/CP

The prime minister has enjoyed an extended political honeymoon, but after 27 months, there have been few substantial policy initiatives, and $40 billion of federal deficit spending (more than double what had been forecast). In the United States, as all Canadians know, the Trump administration was elected promising a scorched earth war on the entire preceding political system: all factions of both parties, the lobbyists, Wall Street, and the politically meddlesome entertainment industry. Trump promised lower and simpler taxes, deregulation, environmental protection but with no credence attached to claims of climate change, let alone global warming, and renegotiation or withdrawal from trade deals that were net losers for the United States. There would be no more appeasement of North Korea and Iran, and no more foreign nation-building either. America’s so-called allies would be invited to pay their promised share of alliance defence costs or contemplate dropping out from under the U.S. defence umbrella.