the morning after -- Bush's visit to Canada that is

[by the way, it turned out to be a brilliant sunny day yesterday. Today, however, is more like I predicted yesterday to be...foggy, and drizzly]

In Bush's speech in Halifax yesterday, he invoked William Lyon MacKenzie King, the PM who brought Canada into WWII before the US, effectively comparing the terrorist enemies of 'War on Terror' to the threat posed by Hitler's Nazi Germany. (I could write a separate entry on the problems with that analogy, but I will leave that for some other time -- none the less the analogy itself is telling.) He also decided to press Canada to join the United States in furthering missile defense.

These two moves are astonishingly bold. Bush came to Canada for two days; the Canadians had modest hopes of resolving two trade disputes, neither of which went resolves, and found themselves having their history misrepresented and bullied into a defense plan most here find laughable.  And this was done on a stage in Halifax with Paul Martin standing by his side.

The columnists in today's Globe and Mail --some of whom were willing to give Mr Bush the benefit of the doubt in turning over a new leaf in foreign policy -- were left shocked, and consensus is that this speech by Mr Bush has made Mr. Martin's minority government more precarious.

Martin helped himself by asserting the inappropriateness of Bush's invocation of Mackenzie King: "Terrorism is a global threat that's very, very different from the situation we were facing in the Second World War."  And journalists are, in good Canadian style, asserting a 'I knew MacKenzie King, and you, Mr Bush, are no MacKenzie King' line.

But now he is in a bind with regard to missile defense, a very divisive issue here, that Martin was certainly hoping was just a bunch of rhetoric from the US and not really serious. Now it seems that Bush is going to try to tie Canadian economic issues to agreement on this issue. Bush may be calculating that the Conservatives, who do seem to support missile defense, would take over government in the next election. My sense is that the NDPs lot is improving, and the Conservatives under Harper will never have enough seats to form a majority government. Canada is not the US (thankfully).

At least Martin seems to be, quietly but strongly, insisting that US foreign policy involve a substantive multilateralism.

This visit was meant to be practice for Bush's European tour. It will be interesting to see how he compares terrorism and WWII on European soil.

UPDATE It seems Jack Layton is coming out swinging...calling for an export tax on energy going to the US -- presumably this would include oil, gas, as well as hydroelectric power. Gotta love Jack Layton.