How to Create a Land of Liberals
The "Canadian Stratagem"
By Tom Engelhardt
Is there hope for a liberal America? Two Canadian political scientists, Martin Sheldon and Arthur Drake, of the University of Saskatchewan at Moose Jaw, hold out a glimmer to "L-worders" cowering in stunned silence in coastal and northern enclaves of the United States. However, their analysis -- if correct -- also spells ultimate success for U.S. conservatives.
Sheldon and Drake's 345-page report, The New Realignment: Political Realities for North America in the 1990s, was issued last July by Canada's prestigious Institute for Strategic Surveys (I.S.S.) in Toronto. Its title may sound bland, but the report makes explosive reading.
While U.S. political commentators argued about whether Michael Dukakis could take states ranging from Georgia and Texas to Ohio and California, Sheldon and Drake assumed that the Democratic nominee would, with the exceptions of Oregon, Iowa and Rhode Island, win only a series of states bordering on or close to Canada -- specifically, Massachusetts, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Washington. "It's true," says Sheldon, "that Dukakis lost the U.S.election, but looked at in another light, he won the southern Canadian election, and it's this political reality that liberals and leftists should be facing and debating on both sides of the border." Dukakis's victories, Sheldon and Drake point out, fall roughly north of the old British claim-line for the Canadian border in the West. They believe that this particular configuration of states, which they call "the Northern Tier," is no fluke of history.
As evidence that this "Canadian stratagem" has been consciously engineered, Sheldon and Drake cite the private comments of scores of Democratic politicos. Typically, one close Dukakis aide confided to them: "Someday, we'll have a few things to teach Canadian liberals about how to run a country." They also highlight a comment, unreported in the United States, that President-elect Bush made during the New Hampshire primary. Sitting by a radio microphone he thought was switched off, he turned to a New Hampshire supporter and said of the Democrats, "One more push and we'll have them in Canada."
From their pre-election analysis of the developing situation on both sides of the border, Sheldon and Drake conclude that we may be facing the first political and economic restructuring of North America since the American Revolution. In a chapter titled "The Northern Tier: Co-evolution or Chaos?" they suggest that the only way Canadian liberals and leftists can take on the historical task of guarding Canada's fragile economic independence -- symbolized in their recent attempts to hold back the U.S.-Canada free trade treaty -- is by incorporating the part of the United States that clearly is no longer wanted.
The result -- a Greater Canadian Commonwealth -- if achieved without acrimony, would offer both countries enormous advantages. Canada would be thrown solidly into the "L" column, an economic giant able to coexist with its southern neighbor without fear of domination. At the same time, it would do the United States a historically unparalleled favor by turning it into a land relatively free of liberals.
Professors Sheldon and Drake, interviewed in their office in the New Age wing of the Toronto institute where both are spending a year on leave from Moose Jaw, noted that since their report was issued, events have only confirmed their analysis. When asked how two unknown Canadian academics could have spotted trends that escaped the rest of North America, senior author Sheldon, a tall, bushy-haired, 47-year-old wearing a green and red jogging suit, denied that this was so. "We're no better at foreseeing the future than you are. You shouldn't view our report as a predictive document but as a series of projections based on bedrock trends there for anyone to see."
Arthur Drake, a rotund 40-year-old who spent the interview trimming a button fern, offered a somewhat different perspective. "At the risk of sounding impolite, the distinction here is between what Canadians can see and what you in the states can't see. Remember, we come from a mythical country, one you don't believe to exist -- not a bad vantage point for grasping certain continental realities. It's harder for you, and we're sympathetic to that. But all you really had to do was watch the election night maps broadcast by your own networks: that day-glo blue stretching unbroken from sea to sea and the fragile string of red blobs hanging tenuously from the Canadian border. The unconscious sorting out of colors was enough. It told you everything you needed to know, even without our report."
"Just one thing," cut in Sheldon. "When you write this article, make it clear that there's nothing pie-in-the-sky about the report. We've looked the problems square in the eye."
Sheldon and Drake have, in fact, taken special pains to confront the possible criticisms their proposals are likely to raise. In three linked appendixes they deal with the most crucial and difficult of these:
* What to do with states like Maine. (Suggestions range from ragged or discontinuous borders -- the so-called Alaska solution -- to massive population exchanges with more conservative areas of Canada.)
* What to do with West Virginia, the District of Columbia, cities like Pittsburgh, and parts of Northern California and black areas in the South. (Suggestions range from the establishment of a "free city" policy inside the United States, to the setting up of Greater Canadian consulates throughout the country and an offer of asylum to Jesse Jackson and other black leaders.)
* What to do with the expected flow of refugees in both directions (a subject so complex that it will be the focus of an upcoming Nation article).
Nation readers are urged to consider the Sheldon and Drake report themselves ($12.95, I.S.S. Press, Toronto) while time still remains for a reasonable discussion of the issues it raises. With this in mind, an ominous signal of which Nation readers may already be aware was George Bush's comment to hecklers during his postelection Florida vacation: "Read my lips: You're Canadians.''
When this piece was written, Tom Engelhardt was a senior editor at Pantheon Books. His history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, would not be published for another 7 years; his novel, The Last Days of Publishing, not for another 14 years. It would be 14 years before he created Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute.
The "Canadian Stratagem"
By Tom Engelhardt
Is there hope for a liberal America? Two Canadian political scientists, Martin Sheldon and Arthur Drake, of the University of Saskatchewan at Moose Jaw, hold out a glimmer to "L-worders" cowering in stunned silence in coastal and northern enclaves of the United States. However, their analysis -- if correct -- also spells ultimate success for U.S. conservatives.
Sheldon and Drake's 345-page report, The New Realignment: Political Realities for North America in the 1990s, was issued last July by Canada's prestigious Institute for Strategic Surveys (I.S.S.) in Toronto. Its title may sound bland, but the report makes explosive reading.
While U.S. political commentators argued about whether Michael Dukakis could take states ranging from Georgia and Texas to Ohio and California, Sheldon and Drake assumed that the Democratic nominee would, with the exceptions of Oregon, Iowa and Rhode Island, win only a series of states bordering on or close to Canada -- specifically, Massachusetts, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Washington. "It's true," says Sheldon, "that Dukakis lost the U.S.election, but looked at in another light, he won the southern Canadian election, and it's this political reality that liberals and leftists should be facing and debating on both sides of the border." Dukakis's victories, Sheldon and Drake point out, fall roughly north of the old British claim-line for the Canadian border in the West. They believe that this particular configuration of states, which they call "the Northern Tier," is no fluke of history.
As evidence that this "Canadian stratagem" has been consciously engineered, Sheldon and Drake cite the private comments of scores of Democratic politicos. Typically, one close Dukakis aide confided to them: "Someday, we'll have a few things to teach Canadian liberals about how to run a country." They also highlight a comment, unreported in the United States, that President-elect Bush made during the New Hampshire primary. Sitting by a radio microphone he thought was switched off, he turned to a New Hampshire supporter and said of the Democrats, "One more push and we'll have them in Canada."
From their pre-election analysis of the developing situation on both sides of the border, Sheldon and Drake conclude that we may be facing the first political and economic restructuring of North America since the American Revolution. In a chapter titled "The Northern Tier: Co-evolution or Chaos?" they suggest that the only way Canadian liberals and leftists can take on the historical task of guarding Canada's fragile economic independence -- symbolized in their recent attempts to hold back the U.S.-Canada free trade treaty -- is by incorporating the part of the United States that clearly is no longer wanted.
The result -- a Greater Canadian Commonwealth -- if achieved without acrimony, would offer both countries enormous advantages. Canada would be thrown solidly into the "L" column, an economic giant able to coexist with its southern neighbor without fear of domination. At the same time, it would do the United States a historically unparalleled favor by turning it into a land relatively free of liberals.
Professors Sheldon and Drake, interviewed in their office in the New Age wing of the Toronto institute where both are spending a year on leave from Moose Jaw, noted that since their report was issued, events have only confirmed their analysis. When asked how two unknown Canadian academics could have spotted trends that escaped the rest of North America, senior author Sheldon, a tall, bushy-haired, 47-year-old wearing a green and red jogging suit, denied that this was so. "We're no better at foreseeing the future than you are. You shouldn't view our report as a predictive document but as a series of projections based on bedrock trends there for anyone to see."
Arthur Drake, a rotund 40-year-old who spent the interview trimming a button fern, offered a somewhat different perspective. "At the risk of sounding impolite, the distinction here is between what Canadians can see and what you in the states can't see. Remember, we come from a mythical country, one you don't believe to exist -- not a bad vantage point for grasping certain continental realities. It's harder for you, and we're sympathetic to that. But all you really had to do was watch the election night maps broadcast by your own networks: that day-glo blue stretching unbroken from sea to sea and the fragile string of red blobs hanging tenuously from the Canadian border. The unconscious sorting out of colors was enough. It told you everything you needed to know, even without our report."
"Just one thing," cut in Sheldon. "When you write this article, make it clear that there's nothing pie-in-the-sky about the report. We've looked the problems square in the eye."
Sheldon and Drake have, in fact, taken special pains to confront the possible criticisms their proposals are likely to raise. In three linked appendixes they deal with the most crucial and difficult of these:
* What to do with states like Maine. (Suggestions range from ragged or discontinuous borders -- the so-called Alaska solution -- to massive population exchanges with more conservative areas of Canada.)
* What to do with West Virginia, the District of Columbia, cities like Pittsburgh, and parts of Northern California and black areas in the South. (Suggestions range from the establishment of a "free city" policy inside the United States, to the setting up of Greater Canadian consulates throughout the country and an offer of asylum to Jesse Jackson and other black leaders.)
* What to do with the expected flow of refugees in both directions (a subject so complex that it will be the focus of an upcoming Nation article).
Nation readers are urged to consider the Sheldon and Drake report themselves ($12.95, I.S.S. Press, Toronto) while time still remains for a reasonable discussion of the issues it raises. With this in mind, an ominous signal of which Nation readers may already be aware was George Bush's comment to hecklers during his postelection Florida vacation: "Read my lips: You're Canadians.''
When this piece was written, Tom Engelhardt was a senior editor at Pantheon Books. His history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, would not be published for another 7 years; his novel, The Last Days of Publishing, not for another 14 years. It would be 14 years before he created Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute.
