He should know better...

A week and a half after the antagonist blowhard on Fox's late, late night Red Eye show insulted Canada to the Nth degree, Stephen Harper, our illustrious Prime Minister thought it made sense to give Fox News the only sitdown interview with an American network yesterday while in Washington. Does he hate Canadians so much? I know that Fox is a "Conservative" mouthpiece, but we're talking American Conservative, not Canadian Conservative. Even Harper is more left wing than *Fox*! Isn't he???

Turns out, yes, he is. Chris Wallace, Fox's interviewer tried his damnedest to get Harper to criticize Obama and lambaste America's current public policymakers, but to his credit Harper didn't embarrass us too badly. I'm trying to be the bigger person in saying that. I'll admit that I was cursing and swearing this morning when I heard he'd given Fox an interview, but after reading the transcript I have to say that besides him sitting down with them in the first place (which I still think was a bad PR move), there's not a heck of a lot bitch about. Like I said, Wallace tried to get him to talk shit, but in the end, Harper kept his head and even went so far as to appear moderate. Read below:

WALLACE: You were the last industrial nation to go into recession, and one of the great joys of this job is you study up on things, and I learned that, in fact, in 2007, you started cutting taxes, and your corporate tax rate is 10 points lower than it is here in the U.S. Am I correct in that, sir?

HARPER: I -- I forget what the relevant American rate is, but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We’re on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly -- by a significant margin the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7, and that’s our -- our government’s objective.

WALLACE: Do you believe that’s better for the economy than President Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and some businesses?

HARPER: Well, I’m not going to be drawn in, Chris, as you can imagine, to commenting on American domestic policy. Let me just say that the United States has a significantly different problem than Canada, which is even before this recession, the United States was running a significant budgetary deficit. Canada is in budgetary deficit now only because of the recession, only because of stimulus measures, and we will come out of it. We will go back into surplus position when the economy recovers. So there is no need in Canada to raise taxes. I’m -- as a conservative, I tend to oppose raising taxes at the best of times. But we have not got the structural budgetary deficit that exists in the United States. It obviously limits the administration’s options.

While he doesn't come out and say "Bush screwed you guys, Obama's doing the right thing", that's certainly what he implies.

So... kudos to Harper for not being a complete ass, but the question still remains why he chose Fox in the first place? Left or Right wing politics aside for a moment, that news organization recently supported inflammatory comments about the uselessness of our military and joked about our dead soldiers. Not cool in the best of times, and I understand not lending credence by responding to it, but for the Prime Minister to ignore it to the point of *rewarding* them with an interview??? Really?? Really. It's just sketch. It's not like there aren't other News services that he could've met with. CNN anyone?!? I'm not a huge fan of them either, but at least it's not Fox. They pay the likes of O'Reilly and Coulter and Gutfield to spew vitriolic trash to the most ignorant of American society. Giving them a legitimate interview thereby legitimizes the other nastiness they broadcast. Why would our Prime Minister want to do that? If he must, perhaps he should wait until he's not the public face of Canada, please and thanks.

What I find even more frustrating is that until recently (and by that, I mean not until this fall's election campaign 3 years *after* becoming Prime Minister), Harper refused all media requests for interviews. He's only sat down with CBC twice - once with Mansbridge during the campaign, and then again the day of Obama's visit. Both times, I thought Peter was even-handed and fair and Harper wasn't put on the spot anymore than Opposition Leaders have been when they've had their many, many opportunities. So up until 6 months ago, Harper hated the media. He couldn't control it so he shunned it. But things seem different now. He knows he has an image problem so, he's getting out there. My problem is how.

Not only did he choose to sit with Fox while in Washington, but also with foreign correspondants from Canwest (Global) and CTV. Who's missing there?

Yeah, yeah, we know he doesn't like the CBC. The past weeks' funding disputes have highlighted his antipathy about CBC's existence. But to obviously make a point of granting right-leaning media access to him and exclusively leave CBC out... well again, that's just sketch. If he's really trying to fix his image, he needs better PR people. It doesn't help him win centrist voters to appear more and more propagandist based on his choice of medium. The medium is the message, remember? Even if his words are moderate and fair, choosing only to appear in right-wing media is a mistake. It's still merely preaching to the choir, catering to his base. That's not going to work. He's tried that in the past two elections and only wound up with a minority each time and not because he won the elections, but more that the Liberals lost them.

So if he's trying to make himself look better, I'm not sure he's figured out how. I'm happy to let Harper continue to screw up his image. I'd simply prefer he didn't do it on the international stage and drag us along with him.