My Schemes Ruined

I was telling friends while playing poker yesterday that I had a brilliant plan to break new ground in the Obama-analysis sweepstakes: "He's not the liberal Reagan," I was going to say, "he's the American Pierre Trudeau." Shockingly, though, The Weekly Standard actually beat me to the punch on this. Of course they see it as a bad thing, whereas I meant it in a good way. Note that Trudeau is the dominant figure of 20th century Canada, governing the country almost unbroken from 1968 to 1984 so whatever the Standard may tell you about the problems with the Trudeau era, the reality is that Canadians liked him fine.

The subtext here, of course, is that post-Trudeau Canada is so inhospital to right-wingery that Canada's best and brightest conservative pundits have had to migrate south to ply their trade where folks like David Frum and Charles Krauthammer have become leading lights of the current wave of neoconservative thinking. Naturally, they fear and loathe Obama much as their comrades-in-arms up north feared and loathed Trudeau.