Losers and Losers

For those of you who haven't been reading between the lines, I'm back from a tour through the U.S. We saw friends in Florida and hit family in various spots.

As it happened, we were gone from Canada for the Canadian election; though present in the U.S. for the last of their debates, we are also back in time to miss their election. And of course, I already voted. Just the once, though, south of the border.

The U.S. rhetoric on TV stations--though possibly not from at least one of the candidates--is very divisive. There are winners and losers. There have been winners and losers in the past eight years, and those who were losers now want to be winners. On November 5, nearly half of the U.S. electorate will have lost. Just like on most Saturday afternoons, when college football teams play, or Sundays, when the pros do.

Things feel different up here. Perhaps it's just having been gone for the post-mortem of the election. However, in Canada, it seems that there are losers and there are losers.

The most visible loser is Stephen Harper. He didn't get his majority, his mandate to remake Canada in his smugly blue-sweatered, snipey image. Rumor has it that today he will create "junior" cabinet minister positions, to which he will appoint some women. Words fail me. Rona Ambrose, the Sarah Palin of environment ministers a couple of years ago, apparently did teach him a lesson. The wrong one, though. (The one he learned: women aren't competent. The one he should have learned: don't promote women before their time. You don't see him creating junior cabinet positions for men--though he experienced Maxime Bernier, too. But I digress.)

The second-most-visible loser is Stephane Dion. He was unable to connect to Canadians; his party was unable to inspire Canadians. He will be replaced as leader. If he's lucky, he'll attain the same status as Jimmy Carter did in the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the buzzards are circling. The leadership race will be interesting to watch.

Jack Layton picked up at least two new seats, both of the ridings representing Thunder Bay. We'll see how that turns out--both for us and for him.

But the absolute most biggest and hugest and largest and most important loser of all is the Canadian voter. Five weeks of campaigning. And nothing much changed, except that it all cost money.

One can hope that the same won't be said of the U.S. in a week or so.

I wonder if "lose-lose" is part of the Canadian fabric in the same way that the "win-lose" dichotomy is American. Certainly Canadians understand winning; they play hockey.

But perhaps winning in hockey is different for Canadians than for Americans. For one thing, most Canadians are avid fans of teams in the U.S., though they might also support Canadian teams. They have to be ecumenical in their tastes--their hometown boys play all throughout North America. Therefore, a Canadian's success on any team, no matter what country it's in, can be construed as a win for Canada.

And the converse is also true--even if a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup, the players would include Americans (and those from other countries). And mostly it's not Canada-based teams that win. So any "win," even for a rabid Redwings or Avalanche fan, is shadowed with the knowledge that it's not a win they can exactly own.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the attitude is largely "Hey, they're all Americans now. Or they want to be." Because everyone wants to be an American.

So what does this all mean? I don't know. But have I mentioned how good it is to be home?