The Globe and Mail

John McCain should stay out of here
LAWRENCE MARTIN
From Monday's Globe and Mail
June 16, 2008 at 7:30 AM EST


It's rare, perhaps unprecedented, for a U.S. presidential candidate to come to Canada and deliver a political speech in the course of an American election campaign. But here comes John McCain, right on the heels of the NAFTA imbroglio that embarrassed Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

The controversy over the Canadian leak of a diplomatic note damaging to Democrat Barack Obama has been receding with time. This can only be pleasing to the Harper team. But the appearance in Ottawa of Mr. McCain, set for Friday, is a good bet to reignite the whole business, putting Ottawa's ignoble deed again in the mix in the race for the White House.

That's bad for the Harper government, bad for bilateral relations. As interesting as it is to have the Republican candidate for the presidency here, better that he stay away.
The Prime Minister didn't invite the Arizona senator. It was the idea of the McCain team, encouraged by U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins with no apparent dissent from the Prime Minister's Office.

No doubt, Mr. McCain feels it will be politically profitable for him to use Canada as a base to remind everyone that he is an ardent free trader while his opponent - if the leaked Canadian memo is to be believed - has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the issue. No doubt the McCain team wouldn't mind seeing the NAFTA controversy splattered all over the front pages again.

While the Harperites didn't organize the McCain visit, they have close ties to the Republicans. They will be suspected by Democrats, already angered by the memo episode, of lending a hand to the Republican campaign effort again.

By tradition, Ottawa steers clear of American political campaigns and vice versa. No favouritism is shown because the mere hint of it causes problems. One such example was in the 2000 campaign when Raymond Chrétien, our ambassador in Washington, gave a speech that some interpreted as favouring Democrat Al Gore over George W. Bush. Another was the Canadian election of 1963 in which the Kennedy administration's leanings to Lester Pearson over John Diefenbaker provoked a storm.

Neither of those campaigns featured something as hot as the NAFTA/Obama episode. The diplomatic note suggested Mr. Obama wasn't serious about his campaign trail talk of renegotiating NAFTA. Most observers feel it cost Mr. Obama important votes in the Ohio primary and perhaps elsewhere.

Besides throwing gasoline on that fire, and making bilateral harmony more difficult, the McCain visit comes with another downside for the Harper Conservatives. John McCain is hardly as toxic as George Bush, a president from whom Stephen Harper has wisely kept a distance. But polls have shown Canadians favour the Democrat Obama by nearly a four-to-one margin over Mr. McCain. Common sense says the Tories shouldn't be seen as doing the guy any favours.
His speech will be welcome in one respect. Canadians by and large favour free trade and Mr. McCain will give it a hearty endorsement. It is needed because not only are the Democrats getting ornery on the subject, but the Republicans' record has been unimpressive. On the softwood lumber dispute, they pulled every trick in the book to circumvent the spirit and letter of the agreement.

But this one positive from the McCain visit is far outweighed by the likely negatives. The NAFTA affair is still rife with potentially damaging consequences. Prime Minister Harper himself has termed the matter very serious and unfair to Senator Obama. He called for an internal probe that failed to turn up the source of the leak. Reports have since emerged, however, alleging the PMO leaked the report to a close Republican contact, Frank Sensenbrenner. He is the son of James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. The diplomatic note then wound up in the hands of the Associated Press.

If these reports are true, it demonstrates unseemly cross-border collusion between Conservatives and Republicans and orchestrated interference in a U.S. election campaign by the Canadian government. Serious stuff.

John McCain is a fellow conservative but he's the last thing the Conservatives need in Ottawa this week. They should tell him to give his speech in North Dakota.

FOX News

Poll: Many in world look to US election for change

Thursday, June 12, 2008

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — People around the globe widely expect the next American president to improve the country's policies toward the rest of the world, especially if Barack Obama is elected, yet they retain a persistently poor image of the U.S., according to a poll released Thursday.

The survey of two dozen countries, conducted this spring by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, also found a growing despondency over the international economy, with majorities in 18 nations calling domestic economic conditions poor. In more bad news for the U.S., people shared a widespread sense the American economy was hurting their countries, including large majorities in U.S. allies Britain, Germany, Australia, Turkey, France and Japan.

Even six in 10 Americans agreed the U.S. economy was having a negative impact abroad.

Views of the U.S. improved or stayed the same as last year in 18 nations, the first positive signs the poll has found for the U.S. image worldwide this decade. Even so, many improvements were modest and the U.S. remains less popular in most countries than it was before it invaded Iraq in 2003, with majorities in only eight expressing favorable opinions.

Substantial numbers in most countries said they are closely following the U.S. presidential election, including 83 percent in Japan _ about the same proportion who said so in the U.S. Of those following the campaign, optimism that the new president will reshape American foreign policy for the better is substantial, with the largest segment of people in 14 countries _ including the U.S. _ saying so.

Andrew Kohut, president of Pew, said many seem to be hoping the U.S. role in the world will improve with the departure of President Bush, who remains profoundly unpopular almost everywhere.

"People think the U.S. wants to run the world," said Kohut. "It's not more complicated than that."

Countries most hopeful the new president will improve U.S. policies include France, Spain and Germany, where public opposition to Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere has been strong. Strong optimism also came from countries where pique with U.S. policies has been less pronounced, including India, Nigeria, Tanzania and South Africa.

Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon have the strongest expectations the next president will worsen U.S. policies, consistent with the skepticism expressed on many issues in the survey by Muslim countries. Japan, Turkey, Russia, South Korea and Mexico had large numbers saying the election would change little.

Among those tracking the American election, greater numbers in 20 countries expressed more confidence in Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, than John McCain, the Republican candidate, to handle world affairs properly. The two contenders were tied in the U.S., Jordan and Pakistan. Obama's edge was largest in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, Tanzania and Indonesia, where he lived for a time as a child.

The U.S. was the only country where most expressed confidence in McCain. Besides the countries where he and Obama were tied, McCain's smallest gaps against his rival were in India and China, where neither man engenders much confidence.

The U.S. is seen as the world's leading economic power by 22 countries in the survey. Yet in 11 countries, more think China will replace the U.S. as the world's dominant superpower or has already done so than predict that will never happen.

At the same time, China's favorable ratings have edged downward since last year, with widespread worry over its military power, pollution and human rights record. The survey was taken during China's crackdown on unrest in Tibet, but before last month's earthquake in China.

The poll also found:

_Sixty percent or more had favorable views of the U.S. in South Korea, Poland, India, Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa. One in five or fewer had positive impressions in Egypt, Argentina, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey.

_Nine in 10 in South Korea and Lebanon say their economies are in bad shape, while eight in 10 Chinese, seven in 10 Australians and six in 10 Indians say theirs are strong.

_Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost the Democratic nomination to Obama, generally was rated higher than McCain overseas but lower than Obama.

_There is growing pessimism that a stable democratic government will take hold in Iraq, with majorities only in Nigeria, India and Tanzania predicting success.

_Only in the U.S., Britain and Australia do most want U.S. and NATO forces to say in Afghanistan.

_Iran is viewed mostly negatively. Even the eight countries in the survey with large Muslim populations have mixed views. In six of those eight, Muslims oppose Iran getting nuclear weapons.

The polling was conducted from March 17-April 21, mostly in April, interviewing adults face to face in 17 countries and by telephone in the remaining seven. Local languages were used.

The number interviewed in each country ranged from 700 in Australia to 3,212 in China. All samples were national except for China, Pakistan, India and Brazil, where the samples were mostly urban. The margins of sampling error were plus or minus 3 percentage points or 4 points in every country but China and India, where it was 2 points.

The Economist

The war for the White House

Jun 12th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Calculating the impact on America's presidential campaign

AP

Lest anyone forget

HOW much of a millstone is Iraq to John McCain, as he strives to become America's next president? Although the Republican candidate strenuously tries to avoid the charge that his presidency will amount to nothing more than a third term for George Bush, his support for the war is the single clearest policy difference between him and Barack Obama. Mr Obama's supporters are never likely to cease trumpeting that, back in 2002, from his perch in the Illinois Senate, he denounced the prospect as a “dumb” adventure which would lead to “a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

That proved remarkably prescient. And the polls suggest most Americans agree with Mr Obama. A recent poll for CBS shows 62% of Americans believing that the war is going badly, and 61% thinking that Iraq will “never” become a stable democracy.

Mr McCain, however, does have a few trumps to play. He correctly foresaw that the “surge” of troops into Baghdad and its region last summer would produce results. In fact, Mr McCain had been calling for the surge for three years before it happened. Last spring Mr Obama, by contrast, joined other Senate Democrats in trying not just to block the surge but to force Mr Bush into a timetable for ceasing all combat in Iraq within a year. Mr McCain is probably right to say that the consequences would have been chaotic and bloody.

In common with most Democrats, Mr Obama is also guilty of having shown little public recognition that the facts on the ground have changed materially in the past months. Mr McCain will try to paint his opponent as both blind to reality and a “Defeaticrat”—the charge of defeatism to which Democrats are perennially vulnerable. Mr Obama has pledged to withdraw one or two combat brigades each month and to have all troops out within 16 months (save for those needed to protect the American embassy and, perhaps, to attack any al-Qaeda hideouts in Iraq). Mr McCain can argue that such a strict timetable is risky.

For his part, Mr McCain is haunted by a remark he made in answer to a question at a campaign event. He said he would not object if American troops remained in Iraq for 100 years. The context makes clear that he was speaking of the possibility that some American forces may remain indefinitely after the fighting was over, as they have in Germany, Japan and South Korea. But Mr Obama gleefully pretends that he promises 100 years of war. This charge is hard to rebut, because Mr McCain has imposed no limit on the length of time that he would keep up the fighting. The furthest he has gone is to state that the majority of troops may be home by the end of his first full term (in January 2013).

Two factors may cheer the Republican. The first is that the anti-war vote is highly partisan. Some 83% of Democrats, according to CBS, think the war is going badly, while only 29% of Republicans think so. Independents, who are the voters that will determine the election, are much more evenly divided, though a majority do take the Democrats' view. Americans tend to prefer Mr McCain to Mr Obama as a commander-in-chief.

The other point is that, come the election, it is likely that no one will be paying that much attention to the war. The Project for Excellence in Journalism compared network news coverage in early 2007 and 2008, and found that the share of airtime devoted to Iraq fell from 22% of the total to 4%. If the economy continues to worsen, that share could fall even further. Although that sounds like good news for Mr McCain, the bad news is that his economic policies are viewed by many voters as being just as close to Mr Bush's as his policy on Iraq.

CBBC BBC

Clinton backs Obama for president
Saturday June 07 2008 17:55 GMT

Hillary Clinton has withdrawn from the race to become the Democratic candidate in this year's American Election, and says she's now backing Barack Obama.
In a speech, Mrs Clinton thanked her supporters, but told them to start helping her former rival.
It was a close battle between the two, but last Tuesday Mr Obama announced he had won by getting more support from party members.
Now he'll face the Republican candidate John McCain, for the job of president.

Mrs Clinton made her speech to a hall packed full of cheering supporters in Washington.

Mr Obama is the Democrat candidateShe told them to start helping Mr Obama win the presidential election in November.
If Mrs Clinton had become Democrat candidate and won the election, she would have been the first woman ever to be president of America.
If Mr Obama is successful, he'll be the country's first black president.