Globe and Mail: A bridge too far from John McCain

[tuvor]

...the Harper concern was that, having already irritated the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama after private comments about North American free trade were leaked to the news media, the PM didn't want to compound that embarrassment by being seen with the Republican candidate.

It seems petty, and it was. Meeting Mr. McCain certainly hasn't bothered other world leaders, but those leaders hadn't upset the Obama camp. Moreover, the Harper government is always concerned with optics, photo ops, message control and crisis management. It was so concerned about the Obama leak that it launched a full-blown investigation into the leak that turned up nothing.

Give the Harper machine credit, though. The spin-doctoring worked beautifully, since the media fell for the story that, alas, the Prime Minister was inconveniently out of town and therefore could not meet Mr. McCain.

The McCain camp saw right through the Saskatchewan trip, and was therefore miffed and mystified. So now the Harper government has at least mildly irritated the camps of both pretenders to the White House, a rather stunning bit of ineptitude if you think about it.

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