Categories: Paul Wells

What Obama’s hesitation means for Harper

Wells: President may not be interested in bilateral deal-making

by Paul Wells on Friday, April 24, 2009 1:30pm - 36 Comments

What Obama’s hesitation means for HarperOne hundred days into his presidency—a landmark that will pass while this issue of Maclean’s is on newsstands—it’s easier to measure what Barack Obama won’t do, or what he hesitates to do, than to list all he has done. He’s been busy. But his hesitations may wind up mattering more than his bold actions.

Obama’s is already a consequential presidency. By moving to close the Guantánamo Bay prison and abandoning torture he’s shown he’s no George W. Bush. By embracing Europe, tolerating Hugo Chávez and trying to thaw relations with Cuba and Iran, he has shown the world a more conciliatory face. And by hammering open the spending taps, responding to a crisis of easy private money by inaugurating an era of easy public money, he has launched a thousand megaprojects.

There’s a lot to admire in each of those moves, but they have something in common. Together they form a politics of plenty: they are not particularly concerned with counting costs. Obama doesn’t like to choose among nations. He doesn’t like to choose among government projects.

I mean no criticism of his decision to forswear torture, which to me is simple justice and long overdue. But it can’t be counted a bold strategy, because torture doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends.

What it did have, for years, was practitioners in secret prisons around the world, and legal theorists and political enablers in Washington. What would be bold would be to investigate and prosecute them. But Obama has been extraordinarily reluctant to prosecute either torture’s practitioners or enablers. That would be divisive. And as we move from the list of things Obama has done to the list of things he resists, we see a reluctance to take action that would be both decisive and divisive.

This is easy to understand now, but it will be significant over the course of Obama’s presidency. He likes to create winners, not losers. So he has embraced policies that have no fight in them and backed off policies where a fight would be inevitable. He has given up on renegotiating NAFTA. He’s dropped plans to reduce farm subsidies. He wanted to resuscitate an assault-weapons ban that died under George W. Bush, but some in Congress pushed back and he has dropped the idea.

This pattern suggests a generous instinct and an aversion to conflict. Neither is fatal in the short term. Both offer a refreshing change from Obama’s predecessor. And because his government spends far more than it asks of Americans, Obama is well-placed to buy a lot of change. But, at best, it leaves open the question of whether he will have it in him to keep pushing when opposition is focused, loud, and well-funded.

Health care will be one such file, but it’s mostly a matter between Americans, and Obama’s success or failure needn’t concern us. But climate change will be another, and it is at the centre of relations between our two countries.

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  • Critical Reasoning

    Interesting column. I agree that Harper’s original strategy to pursue a bilateral GHG agreement won’t fly. The only part of your analysis that I humbly disagree with is your assertion that Canada has nothing to offer because there is no such thing as privileged access to oil. Even though oil is a global commodity, sold in a fluid global market, there are solid economic, political, and strategic reasons for the US to pursue some form of privileged access to Canadian oil.

    The economic reasons include the lower transportation costs of importing oil through pipelines vs. tankers, and the location of refineries. On the political side, there is the potent (yet empty) political symbolism of the US buying more oil from friendly allies, rather than unfriendly countries like Venezuela. This seemed to be a significant issue in the presidential election campaign last year. The strategic reasons include the the long-term energy security of the US. In an uncertain world, the US would prefer to have a secure “domestic” supply of oil that would help insulate them from worst-case scenarios, such as intentional supply disruptions or overseas geopolitical wrangling.

    • Sisyphus

      The US already has privileged access. If not through NAFTA, then through large-scale ownership and control of the resource itself. Any difficulties encountered with the US would be dwarfed by the howls coming from the industry.

      • Critical Reasoning

        Depends how you define “privileged”. Of course the US has considerable access to current Canadian production through pipelines and through the ownership interests of American oil & gas companies. The question is how much access they will have to the future growth of Canadian production.

        Before the price of crude dropped to the point where people stopped thinking about oil, senior voices in the US Government had expressed concern about multi-billion dollar oilsands investments made by China and France. Why should the US care who Canada sells its oil to? Perhaps the US is more concerned with “privileged access” than we realize.

        • http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

          It’s curious, eh? I mean, on the one hand there’s a world market for oil, so from the consumer side it shouldn’t matter who’s got it; on the other hand, as you say, the USA & China do seem to be treating oil as a controllable resource, WWII-style, i.e. “Hitler desperately needed the Caucasian oil fields” etc. Is it all just jockeying for WWIII? I don’t get it.

          • Critical Reasoning

            Maybe it’s WWIII jockeying, or maybe it’s the simple fact that the US government now takes China much more seriously than they did five or ten years ago.

          • Dot

            I think the term used is security of supply. Or a form of vertical integration.

        • Sisyphus

          Canada is one of the few producer nations in the world that has not asserted national control over some or all of it’s oil/gas production. Unless you think that’s going to happen here ( heh,heh ) Canada as a nation can huff and puff all it likes. The industry and its’ acolytes in the West will have none of it. The buyers and the sellers are the same fellers.

          • Sean Stokholm

            We really should. No doubt Alberta would need some convincing, but we could call it something catchy like the New Energy Perspective. NEP for short. As a bonus, there’s still time for Liberals to adopt it at their upcoming convention!

          • Canuckistanian

            wonder what the constitutional hurdles are vis a vis provincial control of nat resources…

        • Critical Reasoning

          Canadian oil sands vital to China’s energy security: NDRC

          http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/chinainstitute/nav03.cfm?nav03=46273&nav02=43112&nav01=43092

    • Dot

      I feel so privileged whenever I drink a bottle of Perrier. Those French sure know how to combine two hydrogens with one oxygen with such panache!

  • http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

    Perhaps we can be part of Obama’s “coalition of the willing” on any particular file, i.e. onside as good multilateralists when he floats a “global” idea that doesn’t go viral but still succeeds in a limited way. My guess is that Obama’s GHG success, if any, will actually be bilateral (with China and/or India) and he’ll need to fill out his team; and we are still good window dressing for making the bilateral look multilateral. If we sign up early, we can maybe help craft the American position vis-à-vis China/India. Assuming we haven’t fired all our diplomats by then.

  • Kaplan

    “…at best, it leaves open the question of whether he will have it in him to keep pushing when opposition is focused, loud, and well-funded.”

    As opposed to, say, the primaries and the presidential campaign?

    • Kaplan

      An unique take on the Clinton health care reform disaster can be found in Theda Skocpol’s book “Boomerang: Clinton’s Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government in U.S. Politics.” A great read, and important in considering the fundamental institutional problems that face any president in tackling health care reform.

      • Canuckistanian

        Skocpol is good though ;-)

    • Canuckistanian

      yes, cause sarah palin is such a humbling opponent compared to the banking industry, the health insurance industry, the oil industry, the Israel lobby etc et al. “drill baby drill”, “I can see russia from my window”; now that is a fierce opponent ;-)

      • nd

        Part of me secretly hopes that Palin will indeed somehow win the Republican nomination in 2012, a not impossible scenario considering the fact that most of the really promising GOP candidates like Jon Huntsman are likely to sit that none out.

        Those would be some debates, like such as for example, South Africa, and the Iraq, such as….

  • Fred

    “Obama’s is already a consequential presidency. By moving to close the Guantánamo Bay prison and abandoning torture he’s shown he’s no George W. Bush”

    . . . to say nothing of Slick Willy Clinton, who authorized the rendition and torture programs and Gitmo open for business as well.

    Wonder if Hillary knew, pillow talk and all. Well maybe not pillow talk, because then many, many other women would have known.

  • matt

    Three comments:

    I disagree with the idea the U.S. has no interest in “privileged access” to oil sands production. Obama has said he wants to end U.S. dependence on “foreign oil” (granted, he also wants to end dependence on “oil”). As U.S. and Canadian conventional supplies dwindle, their replacements will be either foreign (read: Middle Eastern/Venezualan) or unconventional reserves. Hence the contemplation of a massive proliferation of *new* pipelines from Canada to the U.S. and the cries of “drill baby drill” in regard to the U.S. offshore – industry has crunched the numbers, ascribed a dollar figure to the political risk and added it to tanker costs, and the oil sands win. Accordingly, in the face of the storm clouds on the horizon the U.S. interest is in maintaining the status quo (a Canadian energy regulator beholden to a national energy security policy that believes, as does Mr. Wells, that oil is a fungible and highly mobile global commodity and hence is an…unassuming policy, coupled with NAFTA-guaranteed access to the oil flowing in the new pipes).

    I disagree with the idea that Obama “has no particular interest in bilateral deal-making with Canada when he has far more important partners to chase when it comes to regulating emissions. China, first of all. Then Europe. Then us, way behind.” If by emission regulation you’re contemplating emissions trading between jurisdictions, Canada is the first place to look, given the integrated economies and ability to mount credible emissions quantification, verification and retirement schemes (Europe might not differ greatly from Canada, but as a first stop on the way to expanding whatever sceme the U.S. starts with, it seems a no-brainer).

    I agree with “Most important, it’s not clear this President can ever meaningfully regulate emissions, because that would inflict concentrated pain on powerful interests.” That’s the reason, in my view, that we have the intensity-based regime in Alberta (and as was proposed in Turning the Corner): because not only is it easier for us, it reflected a bet that it would be waaay easier for Bush, or McCain, or Clinton, to go the intensity route given the pain that negotiating cap-and-trade emissions allocations with different industry sectors is going to cause Obama.

  • Critical Reasoning

    The Prime Minister is still not doing enough to promote Canada to the United States. From an economic perspective, Harper should be marketing the hell out of Canada. We should be running ads on every major US network pitching Canada as a rock of fiscal stability and a safe place to invest. The influx of capital would help us weather the economic storm.

    • James Connors

      Perhaps the, ” . . . Canada as a rock of fiscal stability and a safe place to invest” message is difficult to sell because of Harper himself?

      • Critical Reasoning

        If by “diificult to sell because of Harper himself” you mean that Harper, as the guy in charge, is not taking enough action to sell Canada, then yes.

        If you mean that Harper is personally incapable of being an effective spokesman, then no. I think Harper is quite good at presenting himself to the American president and the American media.

  • kc

    The most interesting question for me on this subject is what Iggy would/will do if and when he becomes PM. Given that he’s trying to mend fences in Alberta i can;t see that his policy will differ in any meaningfull way from Harpers. In fact he might actually have to come down on one side of the fence or the other, and getting off that fence may be painful for him.
    But at least he’s mused about a national energy strategy, which could be promising – if he has the nerve to follow through?

  • peimac13

    Still wondering what exactly emissions trading will do beyond create a new investment vehicle? Using sports as an example, if the team has money then they’ll pay the penalty’s and carry on making more money then those who cut off limbs to stay under the cap limit. ( sorry sports wins have little to do with money making i.e. Leafs).
    If you want to punish them then don’t allow anyone to make money off the emissions. What’s to stop energy company “A” from Canada setting up a Conservation Watch/Company “B” in Peru and selling themselves carbon credits? Then company “B” buys stake in Company “A” to return the lose?

  • glak from planet zork

    “generous instincts” or malleable principals. I’ll remember the Obama sycophants, Well’s, and when this sick experiment in governance unravels, I hope you’ll have to share a page with Feschuk.

    • Paul Wells

      You mean Feschu’k, Einstein?

  • sf

    “Health care will be one such file, but it’s mostly a matter between Americans, and Obama’s success or failure needn’t concern us”

    I beg to differ. American hospitals are used when ours overflow (neo-natal care, for instance), and for those who cannot wait 8 months for their ct scan or MRI (to get a cancer diagnosis, for instance).

    When their waiting lists become as long as ours, we have nowhere to go.

  • sf

    “But that may be an illusion. Bush was uninterested in reducing carbon emissions. Obama may be unable. For Harper, hitching his wagon to the second is just as easy as to the first.”

    I agree with your post, I was thinking the exact same thing yesterday. And so was Harper, I’m sure.

  • Kevin Lafayette

    I think backing away from fights will be what defines this presidency. He will back down from China (Taiwan), North Korea (nukes), Syria (nukes), Iran (nukes), Somalia (piracy), Darfur (genocide), and anyone else who offers any resistance. I do not think it is too early to say, his presidency has already failed. Kennedy had some pretty bad early blunders as well, but he had the spine (and the intellect) to correct his mistakes. I believe Obama lacks the spine that Kennedy had.

    • Geoff Small

      There will come a moment in the Obama Presidency when the gloves come off. If the supposed reasoning for his “backing down” is the man’s fear of the political consequences, eventually, he has to face the fact that the political consequences of failing to fight for the things he was elected to fight for will sink in and the cautious timidity should fall by the wayside. In his first 100 days, Obama isn’t, shall we say, properly motivated yet?

      • Kevin Lafayette

        I hope you are right. Kennedy was able to overcome his blunder of meeting the Soviet leader (this showed weakness) by winning the missile crisis (which showed strength). There is definitely a missile crisis on the horizon for this president, and he seems to have already backed down over the anti-missile shield.

    • nd

      Yeah maybe he should just resign. I mean it’s already been 100 days, and he hasn’t solved all the world’s problems. What a failure.

    • h.nz

      gee, just looking at my little home office desk: what a mess. I haven’t been in here for about two weeks, but I know roughly which bills need paying yesterday, and which plans need more work before next week, you know, setting priorities, and some priorities are easier to declare than others, and if no. 18 is going to be a little sticky, well, there’s still 15 more issues to deal with before we get to the harder 33+ group, or the postponeable 45+ need looking at. as a comparison, kennedy followed eisenhower, so there weren’t too many “real” issues yet. obama is following bush? where does the house cleaning start? could it have been worse to follow hoover? also, if you want to use the “matter of more willpower” issue, that is a phrase that hitler was known for. when the real agendas start, it will be “a force of will” but doesn’t need to start yet. to raise another issue, I have a lot of respect for bismark as leader, yet I can’t help the feeling that a lot of the early successes came from fortunate timing and, yes, the nerve to take the opportunities. kudos to harper for being able to switch gears at different times, and showing some initiative, not just waiting to react, like I have to when the pile of papers start falling in the wrong direction.

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