In this episode, author and political economist Brian Crowley joins me to talk about how Canadians should think about who they would like to see become the next president of the United States. He is founder of the McDonnell-Laurier Institute and the Centre for North American Prosperity and Security, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
00:00:40.360Nigel, it's always great to be with you. Thank you.
00:00:42.780Thank you for coming. So, Brian, two presidential candidates with very different ideas, two vice
00:00:48.920presidential candidates with very different skills and, I think, characters. The outcome
00:00:54.420is hugely important to us, but we have no say in it. How do you think Canadians should
00:01:00.800think about who they prefer as president of the United States?
00:01:05.840Well, I think this is a very important question, Nigel, and I have noticed over the years that
00:01:11.600Canadians have strong preferences often about who they want to see win American elections,
00:01:17.420and yet I don't think the Canadians think very carefully about how they make their choices
00:01:23.480in the sense that my reading of Canadians is they like to, if they had a vote, they think they
00:01:30.940would like to vote for people who would bring in policies that kind of look like Canada
00:01:35.100in the United States. But, you know, these domestic policy choices are not what is going to affect
00:01:42.940Canada. I always think that the most important thing is to think about how an American
00:01:49.120administration will affect the relationship with Canada, because we are, you know, our two societies
00:01:53.680are so deeply intertwined, especially from an economic point of view. And so, you know, whether
00:01:59.500or not Americans have, you know, a health care system like Canada's or a welfare system like Canada's
00:02:05.120is kind of really irrelevant to Canada. And I think Canadians would benefit from thinking,
00:02:14.960you know, more analytically about how an American president would behave towards Canada, rather than
00:02:22.820how the, you know, the administration would affect domestic American politics.
00:02:28.640Well, Brian, given that we can't actually vote, I suppose some people might say, well, what does it
00:02:33.780matter what we think? The Americans will do what the Americans are going to do.
00:02:37.420Yes. Which leads me to think, well, all right, we're talking about it. So it does matter. What
00:02:43.640can Canadians, and obviously, we're talking about the government of Canada, how can the government
00:02:50.640of Canada proceed in a way to, that does matter, and that will advance Canada's interest in the United
00:02:59.220States? Well, I've been thinking about this quite a lot, Nigel, because as you mentioned,
00:03:03.500my institute has opened a Washington office, the Centre for North American Prosperity and Security.
00:03:10.600And we did so because we think that the Canada-US relationship is far and away the most important
00:03:16.880relationship Canada has. And I did this, I opened this office in part because I think Canada is
00:03:26.660terribly, badly represented in Washington. And I think this because, I think the whole philosophy
00:03:33.380on which our representation is based. Now, I'm not just talking about the embassy, although the
00:03:38.400embassy is obviously, you know, right at the forefront of representing Canada in Washington.
00:03:43.600I'm thinking about, you know, the business sector and provincial governments, many, many people
00:03:50.500are represented in Washington. But, you know, I think the whole philosophy behind it, in my experience,
00:03:57.920has been, you know, don't say anything that will upset the Americans. If there are unpleasant truths
00:04:04.740about our relationship, and I'll get to what some of those are in a minute. If there are unpleasant
00:04:09.360truths about the relationship, whatever you do, don't talk to the Americans about them.
00:04:14.200Try and pretend they don't exist. And always lead with, we're your best friends approach,
00:04:21.980you know, and say, somehow, because of our historic relationship, you owe us something,
00:04:27.940you, the Americans owe us Canadians, something we, you know, you should treat us nicely. And I'm here
00:04:35.500to tell you, this is a completely mistaken way to relate with the Americans. The Americans don't
00:04:42.300respect it. They don't like it. It doesn't give us good results. You know, Washington is a very
00:04:49.960transactional town. And what I mean by that is, when you go in for a meeting, whatever's happened
00:04:55.360in the past is kind of irrelevant. The person on the other side of the desk is sitting there
00:05:00.100thinking, what is this person going to be able to do for me today? And if they do something for me,
00:05:07.060I will do something for them. That's how the relationship works in Washington, across every
00:05:12.500desk you can think of. Well, let's talk about the people on the other side of the desk.
00:05:17.200Yeah. Actually, this is, of all the elections that we've had in the last 20 years, this one's
00:05:22.160extremely interesting because of the characters of the people that are involved. Obviously,
00:05:28.080we've seen four years of Donald Trump already, and we've, we've seen on the campaign trail,
00:05:34.540and in the, and I say on the campaign trail, because we didn't see much of Kamala Harris when
00:05:39.800she was vice president. She's almost an unknown quantity. Yes. But then you have Brian, Mr.
00:05:47.080Walsh, who is a not totally unknown quantity north of the border, and J.D. Vance, who I think came to
00:05:53.720our notice as, as an author before he came to our notice as a senator. I'm speaking, of course, of the
00:06:00.260Hillbilly Elegy, which was tremendously successful as a book and as a film. Now, you know, let's say
00:06:07.060that, let's say that Trump wins, and he says, gives us, gives Canada to Vance. Look after the Canadians.
00:06:15.460You know, we've got other jobs for you, but Canada matters. How do you think we would do with Mr.
00:06:21.060Vance? He's obviously intelligent. He's obviously, he's very sophisticated. He's also all American. Is he
00:06:27.780going to be a sympathetic voice in the administration for Canada?
00:06:32.740Well, I mean, the first thing to remember is that no matter what job the president gives the vice
00:06:39.040president, the president is the boss, and nothing will be done that doesn't get the approval of the
00:06:46.500president. So while the vice president, if given certain kinds of jobs, can obviously put their
00:06:54.440stamp on it, they can only do so within the constraints of what they think is acceptable
00:06:58.760to the president. We know, for example, that Kamala Harris was, you know, the so-called border
00:07:05.620czar. She certainly never rejected that title while she was vice president under Joe Biden, even though
00:07:12.980she wants to distance herself from it now. And I think one of the reasons she was completely
00:07:19.820ineffective in that role is because Joe Biden didn't want her to be effective. He wanted to
00:07:25.060distance himself from, you know, a sort of militant stance on the border, which people associated with
00:07:31.600Donald Trump. So all of that said, you know, J.D. Vance, he knows something about Canada. You
00:07:39.060probably know that his roommate at Yale is now a conservative member of parliament here in Ottawa.
00:07:45.180Same names, Brian. Jamil Javani. And they know each other very well. They're good friends. So,
00:07:56.540you know, J.D. Vance has a pipeline into Canada. I think he's a very smart guy. I think he would,
00:08:08.680you know, be a lot more thoughtful in terms of how he would perhaps manage the relationship than
00:08:17.140Trump was. You know, I don't think Trump is a terribly thoughtful guy. But he is a national
00:08:28.480conservative, which means that J.D. Vance is skeptical about free trade. And I think he's also pretty
00:08:41.140strong on national security issues. And Canada presents a very weak front to the Americans these
00:08:48.980days on national security files. J.D. Vance would be very much on board with Trump's view that,
00:08:57.060you know, there are free riders in NATO, which Canada is probably the worst example. And since
00:09:08.460NATO involves a commitment by America to defend NATO, its allies in NATO,
00:09:15.640they want those allies to meet the promises that NATO members are supposed to meet. And Canada
00:09:23.040has signally failed in this regard. These are all reasons why Canada's stock is extremely low in
00:09:30.160Washington, and why it's going to be terribly important, whoever is in charge of the Canada file
00:09:38.300in Washington, that we be able to show up and say, assuming that there's a Trump administration,
00:09:43.680that we be able to show up and say, look, for the past couple of decades, under both conservative
00:09:50.820and liberal governments in Ottawa, we have fumbled the ball. And we're here to tell you how we're going
00:09:58.360to fix that. And once we've done that, and once we put proof on the table, it's not, you know, pretty words
00:10:04.240aren't going to do it anymore, Nigel. Once we've done that, then we can have conversations with Americans
00:10:10.780about things that we might need, like, say, renewal of KUSMA, the trade agreement between Canada and the
00:10:17.040United States and Mexico. All right, now let's talk about putative President Harris. She has obviously
00:10:25.780had very little to say about her record as vice president for rather obvious reasons.
00:10:31.300So do we really know anything about her, other than that she was born in middle to into the middle
00:10:41.540class? Well, we know very little about her. And I think the campaign has struggled very hard to keep
00:10:51.620us from knowing much about her. And for, you know, all the Democrats scorn heaped on Trump over his alleged
00:11:03.360anti-democratic tendencies. I think that's a bit rich coming from a party that has, through internal party
00:11:12.040machinations, made Kamala Harris the party's nominee when she has not, in either the previous election or
00:11:22.440this election, even won a single delegate in a primary vote in any state. So, I mean, part of the
00:11:31.440strength of the American system, I think, is their primary system, which is designed to force
00:11:38.460candidates to reveal themselves as much as possible to voters. Because there are so many contests that
00:11:44.980they have to participate in, so many occasions in which they have to make themselves available to the
00:11:49.740public, so many occasions in which they have to be, you know, subjected to grilling by the media and so
00:11:56.000on. And she has, in this election, of course, avoided that as much as she could. And in the previous
00:12:05.420election, when she ran in some of the primaries before dropping out, her performance was dismal and
00:12:14.680attracted no support. So, I think that this has been a bit of a coup, and I don't mean that in a
00:12:24.320positive sense, a bit of a coup by the leadership of the Democrats who saw the Democratic campaign
00:12:31.420failing because Joe Biden's capacities were so obviously diminished. And they just simply slipped
00:12:40.680Kamala Harris in to represent the Democrats in the election without any of the scrutiny that
00:12:48.420major party candidates would normally have to undergo in the United States. And I think that
00:12:55.060there's a bit of buyer's remorse right now in the Democratic Party, because what is being revealed
00:13:01.000about her character and her abilities is not looking too good.
00:13:06.260Which of the debates or interviews featuring Kamala Harris have you seen, Brian? There was one with
00:13:17.880Britt Baer on Fox recently, there was another one with Colbert Baer, and one with Oprah Winfrey.
00:13:25.220Obviously, these are very lightweight interviews, not the Fox News one.
00:13:30.480Well, I have to admit, Nigel, that I actually find most of these political debates to be extremely painful.
00:13:39.620I tend to watch extracts, which people who I trust post because they feel they're illustrative of the nature of the debate.
00:13:50.360And 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
00:14:03.000So is there any one of those clips that you would say, when I saw that, that's when I knew?
00:14:09.840Well, 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.
00:14:23.980And, you know, she made some, I think, some fair points about his his mental acuity and so on.
00:14:33.500And 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?
00:14:46.920And she was and she was clearly stumped by this question.
00:14:53.240She was like a deer in the headlights.
00:14:55.260And 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.
00:15:04.740And she clearly knew, as so many Democrats knew, and eventually the public knew that Joe Biden wasn't up to being president.
00:15:17.000And she conspired with a lot of people to hide this from the American public.
00:15:22.380And I thought that was a telling moment.
00:15:26.620And 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.
00:15:42.880Who was actually directing policy and making decisions in the White House that were then rubber stamped as coming from the Oval Office?
00:16:04.220But, you know, I have to say it's based on impressions and extrapolations and deductions rather than direct evidence.
00:16:15.340I 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.
00:16:46.880That'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.
00:16:55.380Brian, it's less than three weeks to the election.
00:16:58.640And we're almost out of time here, but I should ask you this.
00:17:02.600If you were a betting man, would, in fact, would you even take a bet on the outcome of this election?
00:17:12.720I mean, it's when I I am willing to bet and I'm going to tell you in a second what my bet is.
00:17:19.320OK, but I'm going to say, first of all, that it's only a balance of probability.
00:17:26.380There 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.
00:17:39.620So all that said, if I was a betting man, I would I would say that Trump has the advantage going into the election.
00:17:50.540If 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.
00:18:08.340And 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.
00:18:21.880And 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.
00:18:28.840And 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.
00:18:42.660So if you're asking me to put my 10 bucks down, it would be on it would be on Trump to win.
00:18:50.840But, you know, it could very easily go the other way.
00:18:54.760Well, that's that's about as clear as I could have asked for.