The American's Coming!

As in President Barak Obama. He will be here for about 6 hours on Thursday.

Canadians are trying to make the best of what the Secret Service must be considering mostly as a dry run for a "real" foreign visit. People here talk about "disappointment" that the visit isn't longer. Nobody is saying that they feel brushed off. Even six hours is better than nothing.

In fact, that six-hour trip is one of Obama's wisest investments. For a very small fraction of his time, energy, and attention, he's making more than 30 million people very happy.

I have no data to back this up, but anecdotal evidence and my gut feeling combine to tell me that it's fair to say that most Canadians have felt alienated from the U.S.--certainly from the political leaders, though perhaps not from individual Americans--during the past eight years.

So the 30 million-plus Canadians who will be waving at the president on Thrusday aren't inconsequential. Canada is currently set to pull out of Afghanistan within a year or two. While the numbers of troops aren't equivalent to those of the U.S., Canada has some credibility in the international community and has been a player in that conflict. Canada can and should be involved in defining "success" in Afghanistan, and the Canadian role in the region should be acknowledged.

And the president's no dummy--he's meeting with Prime Minister Harper, of course, and also with Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff. Because one never knows when the Conservative party will start talking like conservatives again, and the Liberal party will back in power. And of course he's meeting our own barrier-breaker, Governor-General Michaelle Jean.

So here's my take on what's happening on Thursday. President Obama is taking Air Force One out for a spin. The protective services agents get to test their mirrored sunglasses. The Canadian ego gets soothed a bit. "Steve" gets to be acknowledged as a leader of a real country, and a couple of Harvard grads get to say "hey" to each other.

Sounds like a win-win-win-win-win, especially in a long winter of bad economic news.