Obama not interfering in election, but questions raised on rare move
Barack Obama’s surprise endorsement of Justin Trudeau Wednesday wasn’t illegal, not outside the farthest reaches of a far right fantasyland. It wasn’t election interference, either, not in the way the term has come to be used since the last U. S. campaign. To compare Obama, a private citizen, expressing his views on the politics of another country, to the massive, co- ordinated campaign of misinformation, voter suppression, hacking and leaks undertaken by Vladimir Putin’s Russia in 2016 would be cynical, stupid, or just outright delusional. There is no credible comparison. ( Matt Wolking, a “rapid reaction” spokesman for the Trump re- election campaign, did call it “FOREIGN ELECTION INTERFERENCE” on Twitter. But if you take that as credible, that’s on you.)
What Obama’s endorsement was, though, was unusual. It wasn’t unprecedented, not even for Obama. But it was rare. Robert Bothwell, a professor of history and international relations at the University of Toronto, told the Associated Press that you’d have to go back more than 100 years to find a similar American intervention. In 1917, Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, travelled to Canada to speak in favour of conscription, Bothwell said. But even he did not endorse a specific candidate. “I’m surprised,” said Ian Bremmer, an American political scientist and president of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. “I can’t remember a time when a former president has made an endorsement in a Canadian election.”
So why would Obama speak up, why now and why for Trudeau? “They are obviously very close personally,” Bremmer said. “Obama no question has a favourite in the race.” He also wouldn’t do it, Bremmer believes, unless he thought it could make a difference. And it might. Obama remains incredibly popular in Canada. When he appeared at an NBA finals game in Toronto in June he received a lengthy and deafening ovation. But it could just as easily do the opposite. “Some people may feel this is an unwarranted foreign intrusion in Canada’s election,” Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, told the Associated Press.
None of that really answers the why, though. Trudeau and Obama were close, yes. But Obama was president for eight years. He made plenty of allies around the world. Since leaving office, he’s only stumped for two of them, Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, now the president of France. In his last year in office, though, he did come close to endorsing another one, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. He also warned Britons against voting for Brexit during that referendum campaign.
If you add those four together — Trudeau, Macron, Merkel and Brexit — a pattern does begin to emerge. In his last year in office, Obama was increasingly concerned by the growth of illiberalism, nationalism and populism around the world, said Derek Chollet, who was a special assistant to the president in the Obama White House and later served as Obama’s assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs. Connect the dots. Obama saw Brexit as a dangerous expression of senseless nationalism. He endorsed Macron when the French centrist was facing off against the far- right nationalist Marine Le Pen. He praised Merkel, in Germany, when the anti- migrant, anti- Islam AFD party was surging in the polls. In every case, he spoke up for an ally or on a side in what he saw as a fight between the global forces of open trade, tolerance and the liberal consensus on one side and populism, nativism and xenophobia on the other.
“These are all leaders that have been very committed to the U. S.- led or should I say, former U. S.-led, internationalist order,” Bremmer said. If he’s speaking up for Trudeau now, it’s probably safe to assume he sees the Liberal leader as an ally in that fight, too.
Obama is certainly not the only former national leader stumping. Since his defeat in 2015, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has been travelling the world meeting with and praising members of the International Democratic Union, the global coalition of rightwing parties he now leads. In January, four months before Indian elections, he effectively endorsed India’s Hindu- nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Obama also wasn’t the only North American politician to weigh in on Brexit. Andrew Scheer, then merely a Conservative MP, wrote an opinion piece for this newspaper, endorsing the ‘ yes’ side in that referendum in June 2016. Scheer wasn’t interfering in the British vote, he was expressing his opinion on a domestic matter that has global consequences, just like Obama did when he endorsed Trudeau Wednesday.
As for how Obama’s endorsement is playing in the U. S., Bremmer said, effectively, that it isn’t. “It might if it was a slow news week. It is the exact opposite of a slow news week,” he said.
“I don’t think this makes the top 10.”