Some randon post-American election musings:

-Given that the Republicans have strengthened their hold on the Senate, I wouldn't be surprised to see a re-opening of the initiative to drill for oil in the Alaska Wilderness Refuge, a giant arctic ecosystem that stretches into the Yukon. Bush tried this in his first term, but the effort failed when a few Republican senators broke ranks and voted it down. He'll have a better hand if he tries it again. And given that the Middle East is likely to stay at least as tense as it is now, and that this may lend a greater urgency to U.S. efforts to develop alternative oil supplies, I wonder if he’ll have another go.

-I doubt celebrities really help that much in an election. John Kerry may have Bon Jovi et al on his side, but this misses the fact that entertainers work off of a different popularity scale than politicians. Even the biggest stars don't need to appeal to more than ten percent of a particular market to achieve fame and fortune. The thing is, in seriously appealing to that ten percent, they often irritate the crap out of the other 90 percent, a fact that makes them less-than-useful political allies. For every undecided voter who says "hey, the composer of  'Living on a Prayer' endorses Kerry,' there are about nine who score it as a mark against the candidate.

-There's likely to be a Canadian election in the next year or two. I'm wondering if Canadians will opt for a Conservative government as a kind of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' way of easing cross border tensions, or if Bush antipathy will simply solidify the Liberal hold on parliament. In a sense the Liberals have adopted a right-leaning fiscal policy, and have thus been able to outflank the Conservatives enough already to prevent a wholesale move to the right.

I'm also curious as to the effect of four more years of Bush on the tiresome-but-undismissable Quebec separatist movement.

In the past, Quebecers were always among the most pro-American of Canadians. For instance, it was Quebec support of Brian Mulroney that helped him carry through the free trade initiative in 1988. And I can distinctly remember Lucien Bouchard emoting his love for America at the time of the last sovereignty referendum. Quebec separatists have often seen a closer connection with the States as a way of leveraging themselves out of Canada, much in the same way Scottish nationalists often effuse about greater connections with Europe as a counterbalance to the English union.

Now things seem a bit different. Nowhere is the anti-Bush sentiment more pronounced than in Quebec. Does Quebec really want a closer relationship with Bush's America? Sure, the Bloq has a heavy presence in the current Parliament, but this may be due to a passing anti-Liberal protest vote as much as anything. Could it be that Bush will bring us all closer together?

Bush owes a lot to his right-wing base. With some supreme court vacancies possibly opening up, I imagine that the U.S. will become more socially conservative over the next few years. Anglo-Canadians have long fussed over establishing an identity separate from the U.S. Well, it seems Bush is helping accomplish that by default.

-Speaking of things that could unite us, what about the quaint notion of a Canadian foreign policy? I hope like hell that rather than listen to my fellow countrymen spend four years whinging about the Republican view of the world, that we might actually get off our asses and assert our own perspective around the globe.

We have record budgetary surpluses with which to fund a military that might actually be able to make a difference in a place like Rwanda or present-day Sudan, or assert a bit of a presence over our own territory (did you hear that the frigging Danes, of all people, are trying to snatch a piece of our Arctic from us?).

What about developing a serious foreign aid program, like our moneybags PM promised Bono? What about not snorting like rubes when our head of state attempts to introduce our culture to other countries?

I was willing to put money on a Bush victory, but I'm not willing to put a dime on the possibility of Canadians rousing themselves to contribute a bit more to the world than endless empty rhetoric and bitching.

-In closing, I'll leave you with an anecdote, related by actress Julianne Moore on Letterman the other week. She had driven her car from New York to Toronto, where she was making a film. While waiting to make a left turn, a bunch of locals driving by spotted her New York plates, slowed down, and shouted "Go back to Boston!"

If we wonder why Americans sometimes don't seem to be listening to the rest of the world, maybe it's because sometimes the rest of the world is not quite as smart as it thinks it is.