My American friend
Getting campaign message out, via the neighbo(u)rs
Here’s Mark Carney on The Prof G Pod today. “Arguably one of our most important interviews,” Prof G, who’s a clinical professor of marketing at New York University named Scott Gallaway, says. “I think this means we’re bigtime.” He tells his guest that Ian Bremmer, who founded the Eurasia Group, calls Carney “a generational mind for Canada on the world stage.” The rest of the interview is similarly nurturing and supportive.
Carney says he’s “open to… a restart of the US trading relationship, provided there’s willingness on the other side and we can come to one of those positive-sum deals.” He also said “The system as we knew it is over.” Which is closer to how Carney sounded three weeks ago, when he said, “It is clear that the United States is no longer a reliable partner. It is possible that with comprehensive negotiations we will be able to restore some trust. But there will be no turning back.”
There’s a tension between “restart” and “over” that would be interesting to explore, but unfortunately my phone’s not ringing off the hook with incumbent prime ministers eager to explore tension.
Here’s Pierre Poilievre on Shane Parrish’s The Knowledge Project podcast.
Hilariously, I just realized as I’m writing this that I met Shane Parrish at an Ottawa café a couple of months ago. He came up to say hi, although I think it’s just because he overheard me talking politics with a colleague. Neither of us knew who the other was. Parrish’s successful podcast The Knowledge Project is rigorously international in outlook and much of its audience is in the United States. His questions to Polievre are largely about competitiveness, they’re all reasonable, and very few of them challenge any of the assumptions behind Poilievre’s answers.
Here’s Poilievre and his wife Ana on a new podcast from Camila Gonzalez.
Gonzalez was crowned Miss International Canada in 2018 and has done TV hosting at sports and show-business events. This is her second interview with the Poilievres in eight months — the first was here — and she’s also interviewed Justin Trudeau. Twice. I admire Gonzalez’s work, which has led her to host four more interviews with current and potential prime ministers in the last few years than I’ve landed. But again, she is not in the business of getting her guests to acknowledge flaws in their reasoning.