We all have that one uncle. The one who backs his station wagon into the mailbox, strides into the kitchen with a face like thunder, and loudly accuses the neighbor’s cat of orchestrating a psychological operation against his blind spot. In our grand national family, the federal government plays this role with breathtaking commitment. And this week, the diplomatic corps has outdone itself, looking across the forty-ninth parallel, squinting past the pine trees, and concluding that if American voters deliver an electoral spanking at the polls, the true villain must be Ottawa.
According to reports circulating out of closed-door business meetings, Pete Hoekstra, our ambassador to Canada, has floated the idea that Canada could find itself in Washington’s crosshairs if midterm races do not break the administration’s way. The logic, if one can be so generous as to dignify it with the term, is that Canadian officials have allegedly interfered in American domestic politics simply by existing, lobbying, and having opinions about cross-border commerce. If swing districts in Maine or Michigan decide they are fed up with the status quo, well, do not blame the architects of inflation, debt, and runaway administrative mandates. Blame the folks who export hockey players and timber.
Friedrich Hayek understood this impulse down to its marrow. In The Road to Serfdom, he observed that collectivist and centralizing enterprises inevitably run into friction because reality refuses to bend to the planner’s map. When the plan goes awry—as state plans invariably do—the planner cannot admit error. To do so would be to concede that his knowledge was fatal conceit all along. Instead, Hayek noted, the state requires a scapegoat, an external wrecker, an unseen saboteur whose nefarious deeds explain why paradise has once again failed to materialize on schedule.
For a modern American administration facing a restive electorate, pointing the finger at Canada is almost poetic in its lazy desperation. What are we supposed to believe? That suburban parents in Michigan are abandoning their governing party because a bureaucrat in Ottawa slipped a pamphlet under their wiper blades? Are Canadian Mounties covertly redistricting Maine? The proposition is insulting to voters, who possess ample, entirely homegrown reasons to be thoroughly exhausted by the leviathan in Washington. Between the trillion-dollar deficits, the regulatory red tape that strangles every nascent enterprise, and the steady erosion of individual liberties, the current political class has managed to alienate the public entirely on its own merits, with no foreign assistance required.
Of course, the State Department would never frame it this way. To the professional diplomatic apparatus, every interaction is a lever of statecraft, and every domestic election is an existential crisis requiring maximum dramatic posture. For years, Washington has meddled in cross-border trade with an endless barrage of tariffs, quotas, and regulatory decrees. We penalize their softwood lumber, we pick fights over dairy supply management, and we treat mutual, voluntary exchange not as a blessing between free individuals, but as a zero-sum turf war managed by suits with security clearances. Then, when Canadian officials dare to advocate for their own commercial interests—the very essence of standard diplomatic engagement—our political class acts as if the republic has suffered an act of war.
The real tragedy here is not merely the diplomatic embarrassment, though watching our federal apparatus manufacture a crisis with our closest trading partner is certainly cringeworthy. The tragedy is the persistent refusal of the political class to look in the mirror. Government never shrinks, it never repents, and it never accepts responsibility. When its policies produce economic stagnation, it blames greedy grocers. When its election prospects dim, it blames the nearest border.
If politicians are worried about their fortunes in the midterms, they might try a truly radical approach: leave people alone. Cut the spending, repeal the crippling regulations, scrap the punitive trade barriers, and allow citizens to keep the fruits of their own labor. Washington could stand down its sprawling apparatus of control and discover, to its immense relief, that a free and prosperous public is surprisingly forgiving.
Instead, we are treated to the spectacle of an imperial capital preparing to scold its northern neighbor for the crime of American voter dissatisfaction. Uncle Sam has knocked the gravy boat off the table and is now threatening to sanction the neighbor for breathing too loudly. It would be funny if these people were not also armed with the power to tax, regulate, and launch trade wars that ordinary consumers end up paying for. Leave Canada out of it, gentlemen. Your failures are entirely American-made.