Debating the Debate Among Your "Friends"

If you are a political junkie, I know exactly where you were last night! The Super Bowl of politics just had it's first playoff game, and it was great. There is no stage quite like a Presidential Debate.

Pesky pre-rumble formalities

Say what you like about Trump or Clinton as candidates (which I have done on this blog), I have enormous respect for anyone with the guts to get up there and put it on the line. Indeed, I am reminded of President Theodore Roosevelt's famous lines about simply being in the arena:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who point out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic." Delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910.

That said, respect doesn't make me a fan. I still wish I had another option. What's bugging me today however, is the debate over the debate.

9/11 Plus 15

Fifteen years ago today, I was sitting in my D.C. studio apartment reading the Washington Post and sipping my morning coffee. The day's headlines were about a big budget fight on Capitol Hill. For most, a big bag of snores and business as usual in Washington.

Lower Manhattan Pre-9/11

Around 9:45am, the phone rang. It was my sister in Salt Lake City. It was a strange time of day to be calling, but she wanted to know if I was okay? I said "sure, why?" She proceeded to scold me and said: "don't you know what's going on?"

The fact was, I didn't know what was going on. I was a graduate student-- which by default meant I sometimes didn't know what was going on. In a bid to save money (and short-circuit distractions) I didn't have a T.V. and my Internet service was bare-bones. I did have a radio, though, and flicked it on to discover that two planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center. My family had just seen television reports of a plane crashing near downtown, D.C. It looked to them as though it might be pretty close to where I worked.

"I'm okay. Gotta go."

Fear and Loathing in POTUS 2016

Labor Day is traditionally the kickoff of the home stretch of the campaign, a period when those running for office switch their campaigns into overdrive in an effort to "get out the vote" and persuade those Americans who may not have been paying close attention all summer.

My job affords me the opportunity to pay close attention to what is going on in U.S. presidential politics all the time. I get to write about it, talk about it, and express the odd opinion. Moreover, I do my best to approach things from as neutral a perspective as possible-- although I acknowledge that my training predisposes me to certain positions some would never call neutral.

Yet, there's a difference between the analysis and opinion I might offer as a scholar and the way I think about it all as a voter. My eligibility to vote in U.S. elections is a responsibility I take quite seriously. When I was a junior (3rd year) in university, a roommate gave me a book into which he jotted a phrase from Pericles that I've never forgotten:

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all-- Preicles' Funeral Oration, Thucydides's, History of the Peloponnesian Wars.

As a voter, I am fed up and worried about the choices presented to me by both parties. The more I see, the less I like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Winston Churchill was spot on about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. In this presidential election cycle, the Democrats and Republicans have served up lemons. Like many Americans, I feel as though I'm being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. Some will undoubtedly choose to sit this election out. I think that would be a mistake.

I've seen enough already. I'm giving the Libertarians, Gary Johnson and William Weld a look. 

A New Agreement on Internal Trade?

Last week, Canada's premiers wrapped up the summer meeting of the Council of the Federation in Whitehorse, Yukon. Item number one on the agenda, the elimination of internal trade barriers. While

The Source of Jaw Jaw Over Trade Trade

the press release referred to the "agreement" as a "...ground-breaking agreement that will support..." the premiers' "...vision for promoting trade, investment and labor mobility across provincial and territorial boundaries,"






the reality was something far less than "ground-breaking" and really amounts to an agreement continue talking (press release linked here). I have written at some length in this blog about the neoclassical stages of integration, including their application to domestic settings (see link). Ideally, last week's meetings in Whitehorse would have aimed to build upon the Agreement on Internal Trade and the New West Partnership.  To most observers of international trade, the kinds of things being talked about in Whitehorse are the domain of world trade negotiations. And that's definitely true.

However, what's fascinating about the talks in Whitehorse is how pervasive the very same kinds of issues can be in a domestic setting-- particularly a federal setting like Canada's in which power is divided and shared over different jurisdictions.

A Curmudgeonly Grump or Two About the North American Leaders' Summit

I really wish I could get excited about North American Leaders' Summits, but they've become a big, disappointing bag of snores.

I've complained on this blog about the lack of ambition for North America before. In fact, my second post to this blog in 2014 was a bit of an obituary to Robert Pastor, a long time proponent of closer North American cooperation. Sadly, there are several other posts, here, here and here, wherein I complain about this.

Slate magazine described the Three Amigos Summit as "North America's hottest leaders getting together for a steamy three-way." Indeed, photo ops were about as substantive as it got. Trudeau jogging with Nieto? Obama and Trudeau snapping selfies from the PM's Office? Phuleeeze.... Is the best we can do here?

Is Cultural Insecurity "Trumping" Economics?

Over the past few months, I have started one Brexit post after another only to scrap it after it really didn't go anywhere. I scrapped things because I thought it had too much in common with a lot of my other posts; the 2014 Scottish Referendum, the prospect of Grexit in the summer of 2015, or commentary on monetary relations, or even Canadian institutions like the New West Partnership.

My take on Brexit seemed always to revolve around the same sets of tensions embedded in the neoclassical stages of integration. It may be that I need a fresh new analytical frame through which to look at every thing, but I have to admit the stages of integration are a great jump-off point for a lot of things.

Nevertheless, I scrapped every Brexit draft I wrote. Something was missing. Cultural insecurity. It hit me yesterday in a column by Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post who argued hat what is happening transcends the standard economic arguments put forward by politicians over the last 20 or 30 years to win votes. Indeed, dating at least to the 1992 campaign of Bill Clinton, maximizing the benefits of the post-Cold War shift toward liberal capitalism and liberal democracy has been pivotal to many election platforms. In 1992, the Clinton slogan was "It's the economy, stupid."

The Softwood Lumber Soap Opera

The softwood lumber dispute is back!!!! In October 2015, the latest Softwood Lumber Agreement expired after essentially buying a little less than a decade of Canada-U.S. trade peace. Late last week, the two sides met in Ottawa to see if they could head off expensive trade litigation over the issue. They failed.

A new round of litigation will undoubtedly be coined Lumber V, meaning this is the fifth round of this long-running dispute. For those of you that haven't been following, the longevity of the softwood lumber dispute is shocking. Regardless of when you mark the start of each phase -- expiration of Agreements, negotiations, or initiation of litigation-- the intractability of this dispute can hardly fail to impress.

Lumber I, October 1982–April 1986
Lumber II, May 1986–December 1986
Lumber III, October 1991–April 1996
Lumber IV, April 2001–October 2006
Lumber V, October 2015-- Present


The outcome of last week's meeting should have been predictable to anyone that has followed this issue. It follows a depressingly familiar pattern. Much as a chef would draft a recipe for cookies, one can draft a recipe for this dispute. It goes something like this:

POTUS 2016 and The American Dream, Part II

In Part I of this post, I suggested Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump had more in common than many have acknowledged. Here, I'd like to offer a bit of a diagnosis of those commonalities anchored in the contemporary challenges to the powerful national ethos and mythology swirling around the idea of the American Dream. 

De Tocqueville in America

ISBN 10: 1857151798

 Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) remains one of the most important starting points for understanding the unique power behind the idea of the American Dream. Indeed, he begins his introduction to Volume 1 with an oft-quoted observation about equality:

Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people. I readily discovered the prodigious influence that this primary fact exerci3ese on the whole course of society; it gives particular direction to public opinion and a peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to the governing authorities and peculiar habits to the governed.

I soon perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character of the laws of the country, and that it has no less effect on civil society than on the government; it creates opinions, gives birth to new sentiments, founds novel customs, and modifies whatever it does not produce. (Volume I, Introduction, 3). 

POTUS 2016 and the American Dream, Part I

The American economy has been front-and-center in the 2016 campaign. In many ways, the rhetoric over economic policy fits a familiar mold I have written about repeatedly in these pages. Although foreign policy has featured prominently in this campaign, foreign policy seldom wins American elections. This contest is turning out to be no different. As former House Speaker Tip O'Neil famously quipped, "All Politics is Local."

Steve Benson, Arizona Republic, February 28, 2016

Yet, I sense something different in this cycle where economic policy is concerned. Popular angst about the institutions, leadership, and decision-making that have underwritten America's postwar prosperity is fueling insurgent candidacies that have spread like wildfire through both political parties—yes both political parties. For much of the past year, “expert” commentary has struggled to understand the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Everyone needs to eat some humble pie. It’s no exaggeration to say we all missed it. 


In recent months, there has been a lot of discussion of voter “anger,” “frustration,” or “disillusionment” as the fuel behind Trump’s support. Sure. However, I think both the diagnosis of what is happening and the prescriptions for solving the problems behind them are far more complex than most have been willing to acknowledge. With this post, I’d like to explore the ways in which the perceived unravelling of the American Dream is playing out on the campaign trail. For generations of Americans, the mythology of the American dream acted as a mollifying, stabilizing concept in American life. The 2016 presidential campaign is hardly the first cycle in which the American Dream has been declared dead or on the ropes. I think it’s too early to tell exactly where much of what I outline below is headed. Yet, it’s noxious and potent enough that it could have profound effects on America’s political economy (and the world’s) well into the future.

Rachel Notley Goes To Washington

In May of last year, I wrote a little piece for newly-elected Premier Rachel Notley offering my two bits on what a sub-federal government like Alberta ought to know about managing its interests in the United States (linked here).  Since Ms. Notley is in Washington this week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do a bit of stock-taking.

In the spirit of the pile of seminar essays I just finished assessing, I'd offer a "B+" or "A-" to Premier Notley's early management of the U.S. file.

Malcolm Mayes, Edmonton Journal, April 28, 2016

I'd like to say I knew the Premier is a regular reader of my blog, or that I had a hotline to the Premier's office since a lot of what I recommended seems to have happened. I don't have a hotline and I doubt the premier is a fan. Moreover, pats on the back are hard to come by in academia, so I am going to shamelessly accept one for myself here.....

Some April Fools Election Levity....

I've started several posts on the 2016 campaign only to abandon them the next day because of some twist that makes saying anything conclusive about what's going on nearly impossible. Front and center is the soap opera (or tragic comedy) unfolding in the GOP. Every day brings a new twist in what increasingly looks like a huge train wreck headed for the GOP Convention floor in Cleveland later this summer. The Democrats continue to be more civil, but Bernie Sanders' victories continue to cast an important shadow over Hillary Clinton's mathematical inevitability as their convention in Philadelphia draws near.

If you are in a state of despair about the choices-- as I am--you could consider any number of write-in candidates, or hold out hope that a third party might enter the race.

One already has: Captain Obvious.

He's got the Commander in Chief uniform and political hand gestures down: