Starting right on target in Canada
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Obama in Ottawa
Obama came and left, and met with all the necessary dignitaries. The most peculiar was his meeting with Michaelle Jean, the Governor General. During a private talk, Jean explicitly brought up Haiti with him. She herself is a refugee from Haiti, and travels there frequently. She had just been there on a "working visit" in January.
Obama expressed his desire to have her visit Washington to continue their discussion about Haiti with him. Even Prime Minister Harper wasn't given such an invitation.
Now, this kind of visit requires all kinds of preparation - she is after all the representative of the Queen. An off-the-cuff invitation doesn't cut it. It may even be that protocol would not allow her to make the trip.
Another problem is the apparent subject of her invitation and visit - Haiti. Discussing issues of Haiti, a country to which Jean no longer belongs nor represents, is full of conflicts of interest. Why not Jamaica, or even China for that matter? Even more curiously, why not Canada?
In any case, Jean has always shown this lopsided bias - focusing an inordinate amount of time at her election on the color of her skin and all the "obstacles people like her have to overcome" to reach places of prominence in Canada. In fact, she went through no elaborate loops to get her Governor Generalship, which was given to her on a silver platter by the previous Liberal government, based on... her gender, color and immigration status. She fit the bill perfectly.
But, as we have seen in recent developments in Obama's new presidency, the gathering of blacks - national and international - is surely going to be one of Obama's strategies. He clearly demonstrated this with his interactions with Jean in Ottawa.
