Forecasting a thaw

A U.S. think tank suggests that Harper's repeated attempts to ingratiate himself to Bushco are doomed, as it'll take a new U.S. president to improve relations between the two countries:

Christopher Sands told a security conference on Saturday that Canada has sent mixed signals to the U.S. on issues such as Iraq and missile defence. In both cases, Sands said Ottawa had considered joining U.S. efforts only to decide against doing so, which hurt relations...

U.S. President George W. Bush is constitutionally barred from running in the 2008 election, so a new president will take power the following year.

Canada would have a clean slate under a new president, Sands said.

It's hard to see why Bush would hold a grudge against Harper's government generally, but Sands' analysis appears right to a point. The two issues in question are obviously ones where the Cons can't afford to buck world opinion to side with the U.S. without paying a price at the polls...and they're plainly not ones where Bushco is about to change its position anytime soon.

All of which means that to the extent there is any need to repair the current relationship between the U.S. and Canada, the necessary precondition is a new U.S. administration which repudiates Bush's "with us or against us" stance. And no matter how much Harper pretends to have the ability to improve matters, nothing he does now can bring that about any faster.