On one view of life in the cooler northern wilderness, we ought not let our minds linger too long in the southern heat of US politics. But of course what happens down there has vast influence on us up here. When we Canadians travel in the wider global village everyone thinks we are Americans anyway. […]
David Brooks is an American conservative journalist who even non-conservatives can read with interest. His March 4, 2010 column in the New York Times on “The Wal-Mart Hippies” has attracted some wider attention – and been reprinted, eg, in the March 6, 2010 print edition of the National Post in Canada. It seems to me, […]
TORONTO, CANADA. Monday, March 23, 2009. At some points in the history of your own time you realize that if you keep taking the mass media seriously you will probably contract some dread disease. (In Canada of course our mass media are so modest that it is sometimes hard work just to find them on […]
“Who among us is not at a loss for words?” That’s how Michael Moore began his reflections on the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States last Tuesday. That has been our first reaction too. And it may explain why it’s taken us five days to say anything at all. Mr. Moore […]
The actual US election is now less than a dozen days away. And if you’re wondering how an Associated Press-GfK poll can show Barack Obama at 44% nationally, and John McCain at 43%, while at least “two other surveys put Obama ahead by 10 points or more,” you are not alone. Polling guru John Zogby […]
“During my formative years,” Barack Obama has told David Leonhardt of the New York Times, “there was still ideological competition between a social-democratic or even socialist agenda and a free-market, Milton Friedman agenda. I think it was natural for me to ask questions of both sides and maybe try to synthesize approaches.” Mr. Leonhardt’s report […]
Back in the middle of March an irate reader of the International Herald Tribune complained about: “How low you have sunk in publishing an editorial on [New York state’s call-girl-using former governor] Eliot Spitzer. … The United States is at war, the economy is on the verge of bankruptcy, confidence in the government and private […]
UPDATED MARCH 27. One reason politics has such a bad name is that it so often defies rational expectations. There may be voodoo economics and non-voodoo economics. But a part of politics is voodoo almost all the time. And this part is frequently exaggerated for better ratings, or to get on radar screens, or bloody the enemy, or […]
UPDATED JANUARY 29. So … it was, according to the Slate website “the most thorough trouncing of the election season.” The dramatic numbers cannot be denied: 55% Obama, 27% Clinton, 18% Edwards. Say what you like, Obamamania is back. Or, as the Huffington Post tidily explained: “Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially charged South […]
In sober retrospect, it seemed just too improbable that Barack Obama would go from months of running well behind Hillary Clinton in the national opinion polls to suddenly dominating the US Democratic primaries. And it was. You can take your pick from the headlines: from “McCain and Clinton Win in N.H. In Major Comebacks” (Washington Post) to “Clinton […]
