The Prime Minister of Canada visits Washington. He gets a forty-plus-minute meeting with the President and the balance of the hour as a media availability session in the Oval Office. He meets with the Senate Majority and Minority leaders, and the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House of Representatives. He arrives as the leader of the country with the Western world's healthiest banking system and strongest recovery from recession.
And what is the preoccupation of the Canadian media covering the visit?
Here's CTV's Don Matheson interviewing a man introduced to television viewers as "political commentator Mark Plotkin."
Matheson: Mr. Plotkin, I take it that it matters who greets you at the White House. I didn't see Barack Obama there as Stephen Harper was being ushered in.
Plotkin: I'm not being hyperbolic or inflammatory but I thought it was an unbelievable insult and snub. If you are "” quote "” important, the president comes out and greets you as you depart from the car and ushers you in.
I am supposed to know something about American politics, and believe me, I do not know who the woman was who greeted [your prime minister].
I tried to find out and I was told by the national security press advisor that supposedly that was the deputy chief of protocol, not the chief of protocol of the state department.
... I don't know if it was deliberate or accidental, but it surely was not a symbolic gesture of friendship and it was really, in my mind, demeaning.
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