Ottawa

Everyone wants to be Obama’s friend

Andrew Rawnsley’s must-read Sunday Observer column is funnier than usual this week:

One of the many joys of [Obama’s] victory has been watching David Cameron, the Tory son of a stockbroker who is married to the daughter of an aristocrat, claiming political kinship with an American liberal whose dad came from rural Kenya and whose mum had to make ends meet with food stamps. In the lovely joke of Olly Grender, the Tory leader will be claiming next that he is descended from a long line of old Etonian goatherds.

Canadian Conservative officials were making many of the same noises this week. Obama and Harper — both generationally under-50! Both pragmatists! I don’t want to poke too much fun at this instinct: it will always help, at the margin, if Canada’s prime minister and the U.S. president get along. But there is always competition, and because this new guy is popular, there will be more than usual.

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