I was watching the CBC News today (one of my daily rituals) and I realized something very important about how Canadian politicians and strategists use references to the President of the United States of America.

Years ago when the war in Iraq began under the whole propaganda of “War on Terrorists”, most Canadadians viewed the politics of the redneck President, George Bush, as less than favourable. In fact, the huge opposition towards Bush’s policies made a change in how Canadian political battles and debates were fought. Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of canada was often demonized with reference to their similarities with the Bush administration down South.

The Liberal Party, which is the main opposition to the Conservative Party, often used these types of ads to associate Stephen Harper with George Bush. These type of ads were used in the election before this, when the Liberal Party leader was Paul Martin.

That was the tone with which we referred to the leader of our Southern neighbours. The bad guy. The ignorant, simpleton redneck who is trigger happy and aggressive, and likes to act like a tough guy in public while knowing nothing about the economy. Simpliy put, Canadians were ashamed that our closest neighbours had elected that Texan to President, twice in a row.

Today on CBC, however, things were changed. In a political debate between Conservative and Liberal and NDP strategists, the new US President, Barack Obama, was mentioned, but in a totally different way. The Conservative strategist mentioned that the Canadian public now wanted to see a “non-partisan approach” to the economic problem. The non-partisan point of view is one of Obama’s guns in how he intends to lead the nation out of the economic crisis that they are in, and the Conservative strategist tried to caplitalize on it – by citing similarities of their policies to that of Barack Obama’s. When that was mentioned, the Liberal and NDP strategists gave out a sarcastic laughter, pointing out that the Liberal and NDP has been going towards that approach for months, while the Conservative party kept on feeding the nation lies about the current economic situation.

Bottom line is, all sides were trying to sell to the public that their policies are more in line with the new US President, Barack Obama. Using similarities to the US President as a selling point in political debates was something that Canadian politicians did not do for the past 8 years!

Looks like a lot of things have changed. I consider this international shift of viewpoint to be one of very significant nature, and something that the public and politicians both need to acknowledge carefully and fully. Barack Obama’s election really is a world-shifting event in the eyes of the public at the moment. What the results will be, and how much can be possibly done in 4 years to fix everything is a question that only Obama can answer for us. I hope the answer is a positive one. But all that speculation put aside, the fact that a new leader of the USA being praised and lifted up so much in Canadian politics signals a huge change of scenery, and the way Canada and the rest of the world looks at the USA as a nation.

Perhaps the USA will regain its dignity after all in the eyes of the world. We’ll see in a few years.