Talking U.S. Politics and Mythical Beasts: The Canada Letter

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/world/canada/canada-letter-us-politics-ottawa.html

Version 0 of 1.

An enthusiastic crowd showed up at the National Gallery of Canada for a sold-out New York Times event this week in which Julie Hirschfeld Davis, a White House correspondent, joined Jonathan Martin and Astead Herndon, two of our political correspondents, to talk with me about the state of American politics.

The midterm elections in the United States have unusual importance for Canada. Congress will have the final say on whatever President Trump proposes to do with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

(As is customary with trade talks, Mr. Trump’s deadline for Canada to accept a deal proved to not actually be final and the talks continue. We’re updating our Canada page with the latest from Washington.)

My thanks to everyone who attended the Times’s event, and my apologies to the many who didn’t get to ask a question before the clock ran out.

Next week’s Canada Letter will include a link to a video of the full event. Here’s a glimpse, edited for clarity and brevity:

How do Americans feel about President Trump’s attacks on Canada?

Julie: The fact that the president is targeting the prime minister and targeting Canada as a country is really sort of the distillation of how he is different from any president we’ve ever seen.

Some people really regard it as dangerous because if you think of Canada as somehow antithetical to what’s going on in the U.S., you’re basically jettisoning a lot of history and a lot of common experience and a lot of common values — decades of a relationship that has been pretty foundational.

Jonathan: When he is thinking about Canada, Trump doesn’t have in mind this centuries-long relationship, the blood that American and Canadian soldiers have shed in so many wars. He’s thinking about how can our country get ahead, how can we beat the other guy. And the other guy in this case just happens to be our closest friend and ally as well as neighbor.

What’s the overall mood in American politics right now?

Astead: Polarized. We are at a moment in which I think both sides have rarely been further away from each other.

Another takeaway is that real cultural clashes are happening. The game of politics is no longer existing outside of things like culture or outside of the questions of who we are as Americans. Now it’s really baked in there. You have a president who just likes talking about domestic policy and also weighs in on the cultural event of the day. Whether it is what N.F.L. players are doing on the field or whether it is what the latest celebrity said at the Oscars.

Jonathan: Tribal. The driving force now is what political scientists call negative partisanship. People are more energized in opposition to the other side than they are in support of their side. Which is why they’re willing to sort of fudge a little bit when it comes to principles and policy issues if it means sticking to and staying loyal to their team.

Are Americans developing a kind of scandal fatigue around Mr. Trump?

Julie: People’s threshold for taking this stuff in is really skewed right now; people don’t know how to process all of these revelations. I mean there’s George Papadopoulos: Who’s that guy? How does that all tie in? Is it part of the Mueller thing is it not part of the Mueller thing? What does it have to do with Russia?

I think the tendency in these situations is for people to tune it out.

Astead: I agree but I would caution against saying it doesn’t matter. We see President Trump having kind of consistent approval ratings, but we don’t know whether these type scandals are actually dampening what could be a better rating.

Are any issues rising to the top of the midterm campaign?

Julie: I’ve been to several rallies with President Trump. He tends to bounce around a lot, he doesn’t like to stick to his script. But what he always brings up — always, always — is this controversy over N.F.L. players kneeling in protest during the national anthem. That has nothing to do with any policy. That’s just a cultural issue that is a way of him saying to his base: This is who we are; this is how we identify ourselves. And people really respond to that.

A couple of weeks ago a court case in British Columbia involving the existence of the sasquatch led us to ask you about mythical creatures in your part of the country. The key takeaway from your replies is that the unknown world mainly reveals itself through sea monsters rather than hairy apelike creatures in Canada. Here are some highlights from your emails. They have been condensed and edited for clarity:

Although I’m a dyed-in-the-wool scientist and journalist, I too saw Okie, a.k.a. Ogogpogo, on the same full moon night in the early 1980s when hundreds of other people did.

As clearly as a sane person sees, I saw what immediately made me think of the head of an aquatic dinosaur appear, then its body, and finally its tail. Comparing it to buildings on the near shore and taking into account distance, I estimated at the moment that it was about 180 feet long.

Yes, I did close my eyes, rub them, shake my head and look again. I remember it remained in sight more than a minute. The next day it was front-page in the newspapers along with a photo someone took, which looked like what I had seen.

I’m still a skeptic, ambivalently incredulous and experiencing gut level cognitive dissonance when I remember it. But I saw what I saw.

—Douglas Chapman, Peachland, British Columbia

This is what makes Canada what it is! Faeries do exist. We believe in the impossible, we hold on to our heritage in ways that others do not understand. Not to make light of us, but it gets us through the winters.

—Kathleen Sullivan-Dunlop

Although I do not live in Magog, Quebec, I have visited this beautiful area many times.

According to a local legend, there is a monster in the Lake Memphrémagog called Memphré. He looks like a relative of Nessie in Scotland and Ogopogo in British Columbia.

The city has a green sculpture of Memphré, and there is a boat excursion where you can see shadows of Memphré on the lake.

—Marie-Claude Grégoire, Halifax, Nova Scotia

—President Trump’s restrictions on immigration are proving to be Canada’s gain.

—Alberta is among the places attracting tourists who look up at sky as much as they look at its scenic wonder.

—McDonald’s has a surprisingly large presence in France even though it was once widely condemned as contrary to all things that country represents. But now a movement has developed in Marseille to keep a branch of the fast food giant open.

—It’s not very attractive but it’s certainly big. James Barron reveals all about an oyster find in New York.

—A new chief accountant joined Tesla, had a look around and quickly decided to quit.