That broad sentiment will come as no surprise to Stephen Harper, who has held to his election promise to end Canada’s military mission there in 2011. Still, resolution of the Afghanistan issue may prove the least of the Prime Minister’s worries when it comes to U.S. relations. Harper scored well below Michael Ignatieff in our poll on two key measures of confidence, with fully 40 per cent of respondents saying the Liberal leader would be better at maintaining relations with Obama, compared to 29 per cent who thought Harper would. Ignatieff also topped the Prime Minister on the question of who would stand up to Obama if Canadian interests were threatened (36 per cent of those polled chose the Grit leader; 28 per cent picked Harper). All of this points to some serious approval problems for the PM.
The question is whether anything he does during this week’s visit will ease those problems. Canseco, for one, has his doubts. The pollster points to Harper’s 38 per cent job approval rating in the Maclean’s survey, which lags four points behind Ignatieff’s, and marks a stunning decline from the double-digit leads Harper enjoyed over Ignatieff’s predecessor, Stéphane Dion, before the government’s catastrophic fiscal update last fall. Canseco cites growing awareness of Ignatieff’s qualifications for the remarkable shift (“he’s a professor, he lived in the States”) along with a steady drift of support from the NDP back to the Liberals. Others suspect the numbers have less to do with Ignatieff’s foreign policy credentials than concern about Harper’s judgment. “His problem is that Canadians have to some extent lost confidence in his leadership,” says Hampson. “Harper’s political challenge in this upcoming summit is to see if he can get some of the Obama glow to shine on him.”
It is the sort of thing to which Obama has become accustomed—this faith in his power to raise the fortunes of others. And it’s not like the Conservatives are the only ones sidling up to him. Ignatieff lodged his own request for an audience with the President, lest the Conservatives revive their fortunes under the man’s reflected light. Given the depth of Canadian ardour for the new Leader of the Free World, that’s probably not a bad play. For now, at least, everyone’s ignoring the asterisk.
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