McPolitics

 

(C) Daily Telegraph

This image of Barack Obama and Dmitrij Medvedev may conjure in many minds visions of incompetence, scarce grasp of protocol, unprofessionality, bad taste or all of the above. For all the faults we attribute to the current US President, I wouldn't hold burger diplomacy against him.

Escaping the tedium of official diplomatic protocol is a welcome diversion from the early 20th century top-hat summits and, in certain circumstances, is a useful reminder of one's irrelevance in the greater scheme of things. And I am not talking about Obama's.

See, in the States the title of President is transitory, its holder hooked to a timer counting down until the next election cycle. Such volatility is bound to bake a lot of humble pie and I believe Obama realizes this fully. Not so many of his counterparts.

Presidents and Prime Ministers in many tin-pot countries don't just hold their titles, but imagine themselves being the title's embodiment. The Oxford Dictionary entry's earthly incarnation so to speak. There is hardly a developing country where office holders don't see the Constitution as their plaything and the country's GDP as their legitimate purse.

Just watch the gold and marble palaces springing up amid rampant destitution, private Presidential jets in countries with hardly one paved runway, let alone an airline. Kim Jong-Il's Hennessy crates obliterated, one hopes at least temporarily, his knowledge of running a befamined sinkhole of statehood. 

I now want you to picture the contrast with the most powerful man in the world, running the world's military superpower and richest economy... having a burger. In a globalized world entering the information age, this message is more powerful than years of propaganda.

"I am the President and I don't need to prove it" the burger is saying. To a Westerner, this may be cheap. To the subjects of ostentatious thieves in countries where image is everything, it is a poignant message to see their own "El Presidente" brought down a notch from lavish state dinners in golden halls.

I certainly don't advocate such an approach to all foreign relations (treating Queen Elizabeth so would be an undeserved insult, unless she asked). Yet taking some would-be gods to a burger joint is a polite way of reminding them that for all their gold, medals and titles they're worth squat without legitimacy and good government.

It could always be bad taste, but I'd rather credit Mr Obama with more smarts than many allow him.

When in doubt, wear a muzzle!

There was a time when people knew when to speak and when to stay put. In the area of state service it seems the "all about me" mentality is making inroads into the top echelons of taxpayer-funded institutions. This is dangerous. Trust breakdown between the public and the government can be healed through an election cleansing. When intra-government trust goes down the drain, the consequences linger and simmer until we're left with a dysfunctional institutional jumble.

We've seen examples of this egocentrism in General McChrystal and, I'm sad to say, CSIS Director Richard Fadden.

In both cases we saw a powerful personality (and no doubt an ambitious one) use the media as tools to gain attention and, as some Russians would aptly say, "perform without a muzzle".

Between a private citizen expressing an opinion and a public figure criticising the government lies an ocean we call alternatively "public duty" and "institutional credibility". McChrystal's outburst against the White House was as much an opinion as an open insubordination, and he had to be removed. Mr Fadden's worrisome insinuations were completely out of place on CBC's National.

Would you, as an employer, tolerate your subordinates calling you a moron to your clients' faces, or suggesting at the water cooler without evidence that you were having an affair?

When in any kind of service, whether public or private, one needs to know one's limits. You can either stay silent, talk privately to the management, blow the whistle full-scale or resign. That's the choice.

If McChrystal has concerns, he should either voice them to his chiefs of staff and Mr Obama or resign. Mr Fadden's suggestions of foreign infiltration should have been passed to the RCMP rather than paraded (and unsubstantiated) on national television.

Why is it so bloody difficult to realize one's not the omnipotent and untouchable centre of the universe? How hard can it be to stop and think "am I doing the right thing?".

Render unto Caesar and all that.

Whenever education, children, religion and public money mix, you know there's an explosive cocktail brewing. A Quebec court has allowed a Jesuit school to teach its children about world religions however it wishes, rather than by governmental diktat. On the surface, this ruling is a welcome break from government intrusion into private education. On the other, Pauline Marois welcomes it as well, which promptly rings all alarm bells in my head.

Is it really a school's duty to teach religion in any way? Indeed, religious scholarship is so subjective as to be twistable into many shapes. If sociology and economics - those banes of the unflexible mind -  have axioms, shouldn't academically taught religion be expected to conform to the same standard? No sir, not a chance.

Rather than persevere in the vain attempt to reconcile religious parents, private schools and an intrusive secular government Quebec should at least try to transcend religion altogether.

There hardly is a single ethical teaching in any religion that does not contribute to making a good citizen. Charity, temperance, humility, fortitude, you name it. Who needs religion when these citizenly virtues can be taught as part of an all-encompassing civic education course?

Leave religion to the history courses, where children learn more than just the tenets. When studying a religion, one has to know HOW it emerged, WHERE and WHY. Otherwise it's just empty faffle. Classrooms should educate good citizens, and leave the forging of good Christians to the church pews.

Killing the hen that lays golden eggs

The spiralling vultures over BP do little to hide their motives.

President Obama, having realized he indeed can NOT walk on water, is desperate to kick some butt to show he can still do something besides waiting for a drubbing.

Across the Bering strait, Russia's Medvedev sees lucrative opportunities for the state's pet company Gazprom should BP be felled.

Not to be outdone, the rating agencies are desperate to prove to no-one in particular that they will not peddle garbage as Triple-A gold by, well, calling Triple-A gold garbage.

The onslaught against a perfectly healthy company is breathtakingly short-sighted. Though the billions extorted from BP's coffers will eventually trickle down into bureaucrats' pockets on the South Coast, the eventual clean-up costs will be much higher. How, please tell, are Obama & friends going to get any extra money out of a company they rendered unable to raise funds in the market through their empty rhetoric?

When BP bonds become junk, 29,000 Americans will be out of a job, millions of Brits will be out of a pension and thousands of Louisiana residents will be out of compensation.

This is what Obama wants. Anything for the prospect of saving face in time for November.

Update: and I boarded the same train of thought as a letter writer to the Daily Telegraph. No plagiarism, I swear.