Safe to Say This...I Think

Now that Senator Obama is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party and Senator McCain is ditto for the Republican Party, I think I can blog about one of the BIGGEST differences I've noticed between Canadian and American politics.

It's the skinny-dipping. Also the nudity. And yes, that takes some explanation.

In the fall of 2006, the Liberal Party of Canada elected a new leader, Stephane Dion. He currently is the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and would be Prime Minister if the Liberal Party won the most seats in the next election and had enough support from other parties as necessary. (For a primer on the parliamentary system of government, go here.)

What would a race be without candidates? And this race had several, all with personality to spare. I won't dissect the entire Liberal leadership race, but it was pretty interesting.

Here are two highlights that, in my mind, would never happen south of 49.

During the race, one candidate, Scott Brison, posed nude for a calendar.

Another candidate, Bob Rae, went skinny-dipping on The Rick Mercer Report. (If you feel you must see this for yourself, go here and look for the week of October 10.)

As you might suspect, Rick Mercer isn't the Canadian equivalent of the late, lamented Tim Russert. I don't think Mercer has an equivalent (nor does Russert, but that's another story). Some have called Rick Mercer "Canada's Mayor" but he's not a politician. He's a comedian with a half-hour TV show, mostly focusing on politics and social issues. He's smarter than Letterman or Leno and, being Canadian, much less likely to tell you so. He's a big supporter of the military and skewers politicians without regard to party. He's gay and nobody cares, this being Canada.

Surprisingly--or not, this still being Canada--both Brison and Rae continued to be serious candidates right into the election itself. Brison fell out early, possibly because of his relative youth, but Bob Rae was there until the last ballot (and was, in my opinion, a pretty sore loser for no good reason that I could tell--hmm, like McCain in 2000 and 2004?). The point is that appearing nude on walls and televisions across Canada didn't scuttle their political careers.

And thus, back to the U.S. I won't complete this sentence, out of respect for those who are adept at creating mental pictures, but can you imagine if the candidates for U.S. president in 2008 were to.... Got it?

Here's how the arithmetic works out south of 49: skinnydipping on TV = political suicide.

But I waited until now to blog about it because I didn't want any of the longshot candidates getting any ideas. Mike Huckabee? Dennis Kucinich? Now there's a mental picture. (Brrrr.) And you can bet that the presumptive nominees won't be doing any nudity any time soon.

So what Useful Lessons can we draw from this? It's possible to argue that American politicians are more serious and Canadian politicians are more wacky--though no one would call Prime Minister Stephen Harper "wacky."

You could say that the U.S. President is much "more important" to the world than the (potential) Prime Minister of Canada and thus the presidential race must be conducted with essential gravitas that Canada's leadership doesn't require. Certainly politics in the U.S. is a serious, self-absorbed business, but so is everything else. And Canadians take politics seriously, too.

You could say that Americans are uptight about sex and Canadians aren't. Maclean's magazine has a recent survey saying much the same thing. But that's a huge generalization and you know how I feel about those.

Perhaps the important thing is not deciding a Useful Lesson, but instead simply noticing that there is indeed a difference. Yep. Two countries. Different.