It has been a nasty and disappointing midterm election campaign, and few will be unhappy to see the end of it. The irrational and almost sociopathic hatred of President Trump, even in ostensibly Republican circles, reveals less about Trump than about the intellectually corrupt and mediocre Republican Party whose headship he seized ten years ago. The Democrats have been reduced to an incoherent pantomime horse of anti-American extremists and exhausted hacks. More disappointing is that surviving Reaganites are so hostile to Trump that they serenely overlook the blight of wokeness, the bottomless corruption in places like Minnesota, and the ambition to turn the United States into a one-party state. They want his last election to be a “rout,” in Peggy Noonan’s words, so they can return to business as usual. It won't be. Trump has produced strong and rising economic growth, cut taxes, drastically deregulated, closed the border, deported over two million illegal entrants, mortally assaulted DEI, and prevented Iran from becoming a nuclear power. He has done the last at a cost of fewer combat deaths than occur every couple of weeks in many Democratically governed American cities. His methods are irksome at times, and his public personality is an acquired taste. But he has pierced the pomposity and complacency of the bipartisan system he displaced. He has been a very effective president.

Lula’s rise is stirring tale of a man who only became literate at the age of ten, never finished secondary school, and climbed from skilled metalworker and union leader to four-term president. Yet the same man has held remarkably simplistic and disturbingly misinformed political opinions. In 1979 he named among his most admired historical figures Gandhi, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, the Ayatollah Khomeini and Adolf Hitler, citing the last for his “determination.” He supported the Castro regime and, for a time, Chávez and Maduro. He gave a pass to the industrial-scale drug-smuggling routes into the United States. He bought into the left’s championship of extreme environmental views and made himself the chief spokesperson for the unutterable nonsense that Americans must pay billions in compensation for Amazon deforestation. He has clambered aboard almost any passing anti-American bandwagon joining BRICS and championing the Chinese currency while falling for the blood libel that Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre was genocidal. His verbal coziness with the criminal regime in Iran has been an unmitigated disgrace and is, in all respects, un-Brazilian. Foreign policy under Lula has been a succession of ludicrous posturing and farcical attempts, with the presidents of Turkey and Iran, to resolve complex problems that had nothing to do with Brazil. Brazil is one of the world’s most important countries and there is still room to hope that Lula's last turn will bring mature and well-considered policies. He should start by pardoning Jair Bolsonaro.

This trade disagreement is bound to hurt Canadians, but it could ultimately catalyse Canada’s metamorphosis into one of the world’s most important countries. If the Prime Minister asked for my advice (which he has not, almost certainly will not, and would be pretty unlikely to follow even if he did), I would strongly suggest the following program: Assisting, rather than hindering, the private sector in unlocking Canada's treasure house of natural resources, shrinking the public service gradually from its present obscenely bloated size (over 10% of the population), slash our taxes to competitive levels so we can reverse negative capital flows and promote economic growth, use federal fiscal influence to strengthen the quality of education nationwide, incentivize investment in this country, make Canada a single market, get rid of supply management (the only legitimate American complaint against us), accept private medicine and assure an increase in the number of doctors, and build the tangible strength and distinction of the Canadian nationality. In such a program, Prime Minister Carney would deserve and should receive all of our support.