The Elections of 2000: Politics, Culture, and Economics in North America

CHAPTER 7: A Tale of Two Elections: What the Leaders’ Rhetoric from the 2000 Elections Reveals about Canadian-American Cultural Differences

CHAPTER 7 A Tale of Two Elections: What the Leaders’ Rhetoric from the 2000 Elections Reveals about Canadian-American Cultural Differences Stephen Brooks IN HERE: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE NEW AMERICAN CONTINENT, Anthony DePalma argues that the concepts of “here” and “there,” used to underscore the separateness and distinctiveness of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, have diminishing relevance and resonance in the new North America being forged by free trade. “From 1993 to 2000,” he writes, “North America evolved from being defined solely as three separate nations divided by two borders on one continent to being recognized as a community of shared interest, common dreams, and coordinated responses to problems that have no regard for borders.”1 Economic integration, he argues, has provided the main catalyst for more sweeping integration that ultimately, DePalma foresees, will produce a shared North American identity. This identity will not sweep aside national or regional identities, but will exist alongside them and, inevitably , dull the edge of national difference. 136 DePalma does not argue that full political integration is in the cards—at least not anytime soon. But he does argue that the cultural consequences flowing from the accelerated movement of goods and services, investment, and people across the borders that separate the United States from its northern and southern neighbors are already evident. He seems to be right, although the stubborn weight of history , psychological needs, insecurities and emotions, and self-interest on the part of those whose status, livelihoods, and/or power depends on separateness and difference, often obscures and operates to deny the process that DePalma maintains is already well advanced. Is it true that the political culture of English Canada is significantly different from that of the United States? Did the rhetoric of party leaders in the 2000 Canadian and American election campaigns corroborate the conventional wisdom concerning Can-Am cultural differences? Although the rhetoric and messages of the Mexican parties and their leaders in that country’s 2000 election campaign will not be examined here, if DePalma is correct, one would expect to find increasing convergence—particularly as the Mexican middle class grows in size and the roots of North American integration sink more deeply into Mexican society—between the messages used to connect with voters in Mexico and those characteristic of election campaigns in the United States and Canada. POLITICAL CULTURE AND ELECTION RHETORIC Seymour Martin Lipset has more than once remarked that, for students of comparative politics, Canada and the United States represent the closest thing to a laboratory for the testing of theories as one is likely to find in the messy, uncontrolled world of social behavior.2 Two societies linked by shared histories, cultures, languages, and economic markets, whose border has been among the world’s most open and whose similarities generA Tale of Two Elections 137 ally are more apparent to non-North Americans than their differences . And yet, of course, there are differences, the sort and magnitude of which have inspired disagreement for over two hundred years. For half a century, Lipset’s work has been at the center of the perennial debate over the ways and degree to which the political cultures of English Canada and the United States differ.3 He is associated with the view that there are historically rooted differences between the two societies that are both persistent and significant. Lipset’s earlier emphasis on Can-Am differences has, however, been qualified in more recent years by his belief—a belief shared by virtually everyone—that the Charter era in Canadian politics has been characterized by a significant shift toward a more American style of politics, evident in the far greater role that rights discourse and policy strategies that rely on the courts and other judicial tribunals have assumed since 1982. He has also argued that the electoral successes over the last several decades of Canada’s chief left-wing party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), may have been wrongly interpreted as proof of considerably greater popular support for socialist values in Canada than in the United States. Institutional differences affecting the respective party systems of the two countries may well be more important than culture , he argues. The values represented by the NDP in Canada, Lipset says, both exist and have been influential on the left of the Democratic Party in the United States. Leaving aside the important question that Lipset and others have raised about...