For as long as I’ve lived – and these days, it feels like a very long time – America has been an object of our envy and our smugness in Canada.
It’s in so many ways the greatest country, if one step short of exceptionalism. My theory as a kid on why its economy was more advanced was that Canadians had to get in and out of winter clothes for months each year, thus curtailing our productivity. There is more to it, I’ve found.
It was impressive how America would win the Olympics, make the best movies, create (then) the best cars, perfect fast-food takeout and take us by the hand and bring us into the G7.
When it would speak moistly, as we now call it, we would catch a cold. But when it was on fire, we got red-hot. No one has benefited like us with the world’s pluckiest consumers nearby. We send three-quarters of our exports there, and it sends one-sixth of its our way.
We have treated each president that came along the way a middle manager assesses a new CEO: What will it mean for me? Might he (sorry, all are “he”) discomfort my comfort with the last guy? How can I remain a favoured underling?
We traditionally set up a visit – made sure it was his first to take – and our guy and their guy stood at the microphone, the only time we would be the elder partner, to welcome him to a job we couldn’t imagine holding.
We would then get along. Minor disputes rarely became major. The ledger was more helpful than hurtful. We saw no reason to sweat.
Then came 45.
As our neighbour, Donald Trump has been excavating at all hours of the night for three-plus years, deconstructing and reconstructing, sending architects back to the drawing board, changing the plans, reading the instructions upside down, firing the contractors, suing the suppliers, swearing at the work crew, backing the truck into the gas line, confusing the water and sewer pipes, racking up an obscene over-budget, refusing to pay.
He surprised us in taking office, stunned us in keeping it, and squandered all the goodwill all presidents in our lifetime had built with deft nuance that rarely lorded over us their obvious advantage of position.
Last week saw the annual Anti-Bullying Day. We ought to have been wearing pink shirts with Trump emblazoned, so coarse and crude and corrupt have been his words and deeds, so thankless has he been to have a meek and mild country to the north that simply craves benign neglect as our relationship’s central feature. We thank his team and ours for keeping us from him and him from us at crucial moments. The best we can say is we could be worse off and can’t trust him.
This is likely how people feel in a drug cartel town, on constant tenterhooks, daring not to look askance or say something that could be taken the wrong way. He nearly killed a bunch of us last week in his petulance about N95 face masks from 3M, which had been serving our market for ages (and deriving the mask’s pulp from a Nanaimo plant). Thankfully, somebody pricked his pique once more.
But we long ago wish we could have ostracized him. He opened a trade deal with bluster and sealed it with blather at our expense, understanding less than a grade schooler on what trade surpluses mean, much less the fact of our interdependence and value of our alliance.
Certainly we have leaned toward smugness more than the envy in his era.
Last week’s concession by Bernie Sanders that his Democratic run was done disappointed the American left, but ought to please what is left of America. Sanders has been right about how America has strayed from its course, but his candidacy would have been incumbent red meat.
Joe Biden has lost a step but knows the dance ahead, and if he can steady the ship of state for the next person, we can take his milquetoast vision over the monstrosity. I’ve watched six Trump briefings on COVID-19 and can’t find words for what I feel. Watch one, but have someone between you and the screen for its safety.
I was shocked in 2016. I hope not to be smug in 2020. I want to be envious again. •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
