Western Standard - Obama's fourth term

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:07.740 of the Western Standard. In just 15 days, the U.S. makes its choice between Trump Vance and

00:00:14.060 Harris Walsh to lead the republic for the next four years. With me today to talk about how

00:00:19.620 Canadians should think about who they prefer as president is author and political economist

00:00:26.240 Brian Lee Crowley. Brian is founder of Ottawa's leading think tank, the McDonnell Laurier

00:00:31.020 Institute, and also of the Washington-based Center for North American Prosperity and Security.

00:00:38.320 Good to have you back, Brian.

00:00:40.360 Nigel, it's always great to be with you. Thank you.

00:00:42.780 Thank you for coming. So, Brian, two presidential candidates with very different ideas, two vice

00:00:48.920 presidential candidates with very different skills and, I think, characters. The outcome

00:00:54.420 is hugely important to us, but we have no say in it. How do you think Canadians should

00:01:00.800 think about who they prefer as president of the United States?

00:01:05.840 Well, I think this is a very important question, Nigel, and I have noticed over the years that

00:01:11.600 Canadians have strong preferences often about who they want to see win American elections,

00:01:17.420 and yet I don't think the Canadians think very carefully about how they make their choices 1.00

00:01:23.480 in the sense that my reading of Canadians is they like to, if they had a vote, they think they

00:01:30.940 would like to vote for people who would bring in policies that kind of look like Canada

00:01:35.100 in the United States. But, you know, these domestic policy choices are not what is going to affect

00:01:42.940 Canada. I always think that the most important thing is to think about how an American

00:01:49.120 administration will affect the relationship with Canada, because we are, you know, our two societies

00:01:53.680 are so deeply intertwined, especially from an economic point of view. And so, you know, whether

00:01:59.500 or not Americans have, you know, a health care system like Canada's or a welfare system like Canada's

00:02:05.120 is kind of really irrelevant to Canada. And I think Canadians would benefit from thinking, 0.88

00:02:14.960 you know, more analytically about how an American president would behave towards Canada, rather than

00:02:22.820 how the, you know, the administration would affect domestic American politics.

00:02:28.640 Well, Brian, given that we can't actually vote, I suppose some people might say, well, what does it

00:02:33.780 matter what we think? The Americans will do what the Americans are going to do.

00:02:37.420 Yes. Which leads me to think, well, all right, we're talking about it. So it does matter. What

00:02:43.640 can Canadians, and obviously, we're talking about the government of Canada, how can the government

00:02:50.640 of Canada proceed in a way to, that does matter, and that will advance Canada's interest in the United

00:02:59.220 States? Well, I've been thinking about this quite a lot, Nigel, because as you mentioned,

00:03:03.500 my institute has opened a Washington office, the Centre for North American Prosperity and Security.

00:03:10.600 And we did so because we think that the Canada-US relationship is far and away the most important

00:03:16.880 relationship Canada has. And I did this, I opened this office in part because I think Canada is

00:03:26.660 terribly, badly represented in Washington. And I think this because, I think the whole philosophy

00:03:33.380 on which our representation is based. Now, I'm not just talking about the embassy, although the

00:03:38.400 embassy is obviously, you know, right at the forefront of representing Canada in Washington.

00:03:43.600 I'm thinking about, you know, the business sector and provincial governments, many, many people

00:03:50.500 are represented in Washington. But, you know, I think the whole philosophy behind it, in my experience,

00:03:57.920 has been, you know, don't say anything that will upset the Americans. If there are unpleasant truths

00:04:04.740 about our relationship, and I'll get to what some of those are in a minute. If there are unpleasant

00:04:09.360 truths about the relationship, whatever you do, don't talk to the Americans about them.

00:04:14.200 Try and pretend they don't exist. And always lead with, we're your best friends approach,

00:04:21.980 you know, and say, somehow, because of our historic relationship, you owe us something,

00:04:27.940 you, the Americans owe us Canadians, something we, you know, you should treat us nicely. And I'm here

00:04:35.500 to tell you, this is a completely mistaken way to relate with the Americans. The Americans don't

00:04:42.300 respect it. They don't like it. It doesn't give us good results. You know, Washington is a very

00:04:49.960 transactional town. And what I mean by that is, when you go in for a meeting, whatever's happened

00:04:55.360 in the past is kind of irrelevant. The person on the other side of the desk is sitting there

00:05:00.100 thinking, what is this person going to be able to do for me today? And if they do something for me,

00:05:07.060 I will do something for them. That's how the relationship works in Washington, across every

00:05:12.500 desk you can think of. Well, let's talk about the people on the other side of the desk.

00:05:17.200 Yeah. Actually, this is, of all the elections that we've had in the last 20 years, this one's

00:05:22.160 extremely interesting because of the characters of the people that are involved. Obviously,

00:05:28.080 we've seen four years of Donald Trump already, and we've, we've seen on the campaign trail,

00:05:34.540 and in the, and I say on the campaign trail, because we didn't see much of Kamala Harris when

00:05:39.800 she was vice president. She's almost an unknown quantity. Yes. But then you have Brian, Mr.

00:05:47.080 Walsh, who is a not totally unknown quantity north of the border, and J.D. Vance, who I think came to

00:05:53.720 our notice as, as an author before he came to our notice as a senator. I'm speaking, of course, of the

00:06:00.260 Hillbilly Elegy, which was tremendously successful as a book and as a film. Now, you know, let's say

00:06:07.060 that, let's say that Trump wins, and he says, gives us, gives Canada to Vance. Look after the Canadians.

00:06:15.460 You know, we've got other jobs for you, but Canada matters. How do you think we would do with Mr.

00:06:21.060 Vance? He's obviously intelligent. He's obviously, he's very sophisticated. He's also all American. Is he

00:06:27.780 going to be a sympathetic voice in the administration for Canada?

00:06:32.740 Well, I mean, the first thing to remember is that no matter what job the president gives the vice

00:06:39.040 president, the president is the boss, and nothing will be done that doesn't get the approval of the

00:06:46.500 president. So while the vice president, if given certain kinds of jobs, can obviously put their

00:06:54.440 stamp on it, they can only do so within the constraints of what they think is acceptable

00:06:58.760 to the president. We know, for example, that Kamala Harris was, you know, the so-called border

00:07:05.620 czar. She certainly never rejected that title while she was vice president under Joe Biden, even though

00:07:12.980 she wants to distance herself from it now. And I think one of the reasons she was completely

00:07:19.820 ineffective in that role is because Joe Biden didn't want her to be effective. He wanted to 0.91

00:07:25.060 distance himself from, you know, a sort of militant stance on the border, which people associated with

00:07:31.600 Donald Trump. So all of that said, you know, J.D. Vance, he knows something about Canada. You

00:07:39.060 probably know that his roommate at Yale is now a conservative member of parliament here in Ottawa.

00:07:45.180 Same names, Brian. Jamil Javani. And they know each other very well. They're good friends. So,

00:07:56.540 you know, J.D. Vance has a pipeline into Canada. I think he's a very smart guy. I think he would,

00:08:08.680 you know, be a lot more thoughtful in terms of how he would perhaps manage the relationship than

00:08:17.140 Trump was. You know, I don't think Trump is a terribly thoughtful guy. But he is a national

00:08:28.480 conservative, which means that J.D. Vance is skeptical about free trade. And I think he's also pretty

00:08:41.140 strong on national security issues. And Canada presents a very weak front to the Americans these

00:08:48.980 days on national security files. J.D. Vance would be very much on board with Trump's view that,

00:08:57.060 you know, there are free riders in NATO, which Canada is probably the worst example. And since

00:09:08.460 NATO involves a commitment by America to defend NATO, its allies in NATO,

00:09:15.640 they want those allies to meet the promises that NATO members are supposed to meet. And Canada

00:09:23.040 has signally failed in this regard. These are all reasons why Canada's stock is extremely low in

00:09:30.160 Washington, and why it's going to be terribly important, whoever is in charge of the Canada file

00:09:38.300 in Washington, that we be able to show up and say, assuming that there's a Trump administration,

00:09:43.680 that we be able to show up and say, look, for the past couple of decades, under both conservative

00:09:50.820 and liberal governments in Ottawa, we have fumbled the ball. And we're here to tell you how we're going

00:09:58.360 to fix that. And once we've done that, and once we put proof on the table, it's not, you know, pretty words

00:10:04.240 aren't going to do it anymore, Nigel. Once we've done that, then we can have conversations with Americans

00:10:10.780 about things that we might need, like, say, renewal of KUSMA, the trade agreement between Canada and the

00:10:17.040 United States and Mexico. All right, now let's talk about putative President Harris. She has obviously 0.99

00:10:25.780 had very little to say about her record as vice president for rather obvious reasons.

00:10:31.300 So do we really know anything about her, other than that she was born in middle to into the middle

00:10:41.540 class? Well, we know very little about her. And I think the campaign has struggled very hard to keep

00:10:51.620 us from knowing much about her. And for, you know, all the Democrats scorn heaped on Trump over his alleged

00:11:03.360 anti-democratic tendencies. I think that's a bit rich coming from a party that has, through internal party

00:11:12.040 machinations, made Kamala Harris the party's nominee when she has not, in either the previous election or

00:11:22.440 this election, even won a single delegate in a primary vote in any state. So, I mean, part of the

00:11:31.440 strength of the American system, I think, is their primary system, which is designed to force 0.96

00:11:38.460 candidates to reveal themselves as much as possible to voters. Because there are so many contests that

00:11:44.980 they have to participate in, so many occasions in which they have to make themselves available to the

00:11:49.740 public, so many occasions in which they have to be, you know, subjected to grilling by the media and so

00:11:56.000 on. And she has, in this election, of course, avoided that as much as she could. And in the previous

00:12:05.420 election, when she ran in some of the primaries before dropping out, her performance was dismal and

00:12:14.680 attracted no support. So, I think that this has been a bit of a coup, and I don't mean that in a

00:12:24.320 positive sense, a bit of a coup by the leadership of the Democrats who saw the Democratic campaign

00:12:31.420 failing because Joe Biden's capacities were so obviously diminished. And they just simply slipped

00:12:40.680 Kamala Harris in to represent the Democrats in the election without any of the scrutiny that

00:12:48.420 major party candidates would normally have to undergo in the United States. And I think that

00:12:55.060 there's a bit of buyer's remorse right now in the Democratic Party, because what is being revealed

00:13:01.000 about her character and her abilities is not looking too good.

00:13:06.260 Which of the debates or interviews featuring Kamala Harris have you seen, Brian? There was one with

00:13:17.880 Britt Baer on Fox recently, there was another one with Colbert Baer, and one with Oprah Winfrey.

00:13:25.220 Obviously, these are very lightweight interviews, not the Fox News one.

00:13:30.480 Well, I have to admit, Nigel, that I actually find most of these political debates to be extremely painful.

00:13:39.620 I tend to watch extracts, which people who I trust post because they feel they're illustrative of the nature of the debate.

00:13:50.360 And so I feel I've I've seen quite a lot of the of the debates, but not I haven't sat through, you know, the full debate in any case, because

00:14:03.000 So is there any one of those clips that you would say, when I saw that, that's when I knew?

00:14:09.840 Well, you know, I thought I thought in the Fox News interview when Kamala Harris was talking about, you know, Donald Trump's fitness to be president.

00:14:23.980 And, you know, she made some, I think, some fair points about his his mental acuity and so on.

00:14:33.500 And then the interviewer said, well, he basically said, since you've raised this, when did you first realize that Joe Biden's faculties were diminished?

00:14:46.920 And she was and she was clearly stumped by this question.

00:14:52.660 Yes.

00:14:53.240 She was like a deer in the headlights.

00:14:55.260 And yet, you know, she was there as the vice president for Joe Biden during the four years he was supposed to be governing the United States.

00:15:04.740 And she clearly knew, as so many Democrats knew, and eventually the public knew that Joe Biden wasn't up to being president.

00:15:17.000 And she conspired with a lot of people to hide this from the American public. 1.00

00:15:22.380 And I thought that was a telling moment.

00:15:24.360 That was indeed.

00:15:26.620 And one of the things that it prompts you to consider is when Mr. Biden was not making all the decisions and President Harris, Vice President Harris doesn't seem like she was on top of her files either.

00:15:42.880 Who was actually directing policy and making decisions in the White House that were then rubber stamped as coming from the Oval Office?

00:15:55.680 Do you have a theory there?

00:15:58.920 Yes.

00:15:59.760 No.

00:16:00.720 No.

00:16:01.360 All right.

00:16:02.360 I think we can.

00:16:03.080 No, I do have a theory.

00:16:04.220 But, you know, I have to say it's based on impressions and extrapolations and deductions rather than direct evidence.

00:16:15.340 I have to say that I think that I think that President, former President Obama was the guy who had the most influence over the people who were essentially running the administration in the mental absence of Joe Biden.

00:16:36.540 So a third Obama term.

00:16:39.400 Well, and if Kamala Harris wins, I suspect there will be a fourth.

00:16:45.780 Yes.

00:16:46.880 That's actually a frightening thought, not only because of what it means in practical terms, but the system itself could be manipulated in that way.

00:16:55.380 Brian, it's less than three weeks to the election.

00:16:58.640 And we're almost out of time here, but I should ask you this.

00:17:02.600 If you were a betting man, would, in fact, would you even take a bet on the outcome of this election?

00:17:12.280 Yes.

00:17:12.720 I mean, it's when I I am willing to bet and I'm going to tell you in a second what my bet is.

00:17:19.320 OK, but I'm going to say, first of all, that it's only a balance of probability.

00:17:26.380 There are many, many factors that will go into this and it is so close that, you know, handfuls of votes in a in a few states will affect the outcome in a in a very powerful way.

00:17:39.620 So all that said, if I was a betting man, I would I would say that Trump has the advantage going into the election.

00:17:50.540 If you follow these things, for example, real clear politics, which I I have a lot of time for a website in Washington, real clear politics runs a very authoritative sort of summary of the polls and so on.

00:18:08.340 And their view is that Trump's going to win by about 40 votes in the Electoral College, roughly speaking, which is actually a fairly decisive margin of victory.

00:18:21.880 And that's in spite of the fact, by the way, that Harris will almost certainly win the popular vote, but by a very tiny margin.

00:18:28.840 And because of the way the Electoral College works, that will result in a in a Trump victory, perfectly in order in terms of the American constitutional order.

00:18:42.660 So if you're asking me to put my 10 bucks down, it would be on it would be on Trump to win.

00:18:50.840 But, you know, it could very easily go the other way.

00:18:54.760 Well, that's that's about as clear as I could have asked for.

00:18:59.620 Thank you very much, Brian.

00:19:01.360 Brian, it's always a pleasure to have you on the show.

00:19:04.400 Your thoughts are are insightful and to the point.

00:19:07.960 Thank you for doing this today.

00:19:09.740 And we will see you again probably soon after the election for a recap.

00:19:15.900 Meanwhile, for the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:19:24.760 Thank you.

00:19:40.340 Thank you.

Western Standard - October 22, 2024

Obama's fourth term

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