Warren Kinsella

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George and Jean

At one point during their recent meeting in Washington - after pesky news reporters had dispersed, slinking off to write lengthy thumbsuckers about the grave and perilous state of Canada-U.S. relations - U.S. President George W. Bush turned to his guest, Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Speaking in his now-distinctive Texas twang, Mr. Bush said: “The media used to say I couldn’t string two sentences together.”

Without missing a beat, Canada’s Prime Minister replied: “Yeah. I know how you feel.” And the two men laughed - a real, no-holding-back kind of laugh. They then returned to doing what they had been doing since they met, which was getting along like a house on fire.

Canadians who were tucking into their toast and morning papers, the next day, were told something entirely different. “An awkward first date,” sniffed one National Post headline. The newly-minted U.S. President and his Canadian guest were “jittery,” declared the Post. Their relations were “predictably cool,” and the pair were “ill at ease,” no less.

Reviving the arcane science of Kremlinology, the Post’s Alexander Rose wrote: “The PM sat on the edge of his chair with shoulders hunched, ankles crossed and hands clasped between his legs like some medieval penitent being told off by the local priest. He was uncomfortable…Mr. Bush was not a great deal more relaxed but, two weeks into his job, there were signs of growing authority.” Warming to his new profession - that of an accredited body language psychologist - Mr. Rose wrote: “[President Bush] sat forward with elbows poised on the edge of the armrests and forearms arching upward - a modern version of the ‘arms akimbo’ pose used by Renaissance artists to depict Boldness, Virility and Command when they were painting princes and plenipotentiaries.”

All of this would be screamingly funny - the stuff about virile Renaissance artists and plenipotentiaries in particular - were it not for the fact that other scribes had become Kremlinologists, as well. Because the Prime Minister had gone golfing with Mr. Bush’s predecessor, and because the Prime Minister’s nephew had merely stated that Mr. Bush’s Democratic opponent, Al Gore, was “a friend of Canada,” Canada’s commentariat had worked itself into a teeth-gnashing frenzy. In column after column, the pundits prognosticated that bad times lay ahead in Canada-U.S. relations. Editorialists darkly recalled Lyndon Baines Johnson mauling the lapels of Mike Pearson’s jacket, or John Diefenbaker hissing and sputtering about the insolence of John F. Kennedy.

The fact that Mr. Bush was not making his first foreign trip to Canada was noted in ominous tones. (The fact that Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford never bothered to do so - and that Mr. Clinton travelled here in 1993 to meet with Boris Yeltsin, not a Canadian Prime Minister - was left unsaid.)

Worse yet was the fact that Mr. Bush had been tricked - by that rascally Rick Mercer - into referring to Mr. Chretien as “Jean Poutine” on This Hour Has 22 Minutes. This, perhaps more than anything else, was concrete evidence of the growing winds of war. The great conflict of 1812, it seemed, was about to replayed with a far less satisfying result.

Not so fast, pardner, as they say in Mr. Bush’s home state. The anti-Chretien Spin Machine, usually operating at the speed of a Maytag in a cloth diaper depot, had gotten things wrong once again.

I am reliably informed that, on his first full day of work, President Bush telephoned the Prime Minister of all of Canada, and a pleasant chat ensued. Each man liked what the other had to say. The President suggested meeting as quickly as possible, and the Prime Minister agreed.

Two weeks and a bit later, voila! The President and the Prime Minister met. As had President Clinton before him, the Prime Minister found Mr. Bush to be as easy-going as he was engaging. He was, in short, someone with whom the Prime Minister could do business. The Prime Minister liked Mr. Bush a great deal, notwithstanding the observations of the body language psychoanalysts employed by the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

Don’t just take my word for it. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, a confidante of the Bush family and usually no Chretien enthusiast, confirmed that he had spoken to his American friends about the Liberal Party leader. Said he: “I have reminded them of the importance of the Canadian relationship…and that [Mr. Chretien’s] administration was one that they could [do] business with effectively and well.”

It is not very often that a Liberal partisan will approvingly quote Mr. Mulroney, but in this case, he knows whereof he speaks. (The positioning of the Mr. Mulroney’s limbs was unknown, at press time, but we can count on the Post’s Kremlinologists to ferret out the relevant facts sometime soon.)

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