Harper's White House greeting an "unbelievable insult and snub": Beltway insider

[UPDATED – WITH PMO REACTION]

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived at the White House this morning for a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Canadian all-news networks were carrying the event live. On CTV News Channel, anchor Dan Matheson watched the incoming pictures with Mark Plotkin, the political commentator and analyst for WTOP Radio in Washington and a long-time Beltway insider. Here's my rough transcript of the conversation, as aired, between Plotkin and Matheson:

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.

Matheson: Does this go hand in glove with the way [UK Prime Minister] Gordon Brown was treated? At one time, the Brits were called the greatest friend America has in the world, and that was a couple years ago, and we, of course, are American's greatest trading partner. What's going on here? What do you make of this?

Plotkin: Well, what I think of it — I scoured the Washington Post which every – quote – opinion maker reads and there were two scintillas of mention – very, very brief about this visit.

One just said [Harper] was meeting with [Obama], and then there was some other passing reference that had nothing to do with the visit, but just with Canada, and how you're our good neighbor. You don't cause any trouble. You don't have drug wars that we know about. You don't plan to invade … and you're taken for granted. You're the neighbor who we can count on and we can rely on and is really our very nice neighbor but we really don't invite them in for holiday parties or when there are serious things. So this, to me, is a very pro forma visit. I must be fair, when it came to Gordon Brown, they did the same thing. I've been told here that Canadian reporters are getting one question [of Harper and Obama] and an American reporter is getting one question and that's it. If you are really significant, important, big, huge, you get something in the east room which is a joint press conference where the prime minister and the president would stand there with their flags and they would receive inquiries and questions. To call this downplayed visit is an overstatement.

… I don't want to be too extreme. I'm sure it's being taken seriously. We have the longest border with your country. You have been in Afghanistan [but] you're just some nice little thing, and in Washington, where every nuance is observed and commented upon you are, for all practical purposes — and I don't mean to be mean — invisible. You don't cause us any trouble. I would think that the president maybe would say something publicly about the gratitude he has for the sacrifices you've made in Afghanistan. We're on the eve of hearing that [the U.S. military] wants more troops. The president has sent 21,000 more troops. We have 86,000 people there.

In terms of the “Buy American” provision, which I know disturbs [Canada] quite a bit in the stimulus package, it seems to me that those issues are big enough and even if we didn't care about you, just the proximity of good manners would seem to me that you be included.

But this president, in many ways, although he's a classy guy, I think is not either advised or doesn't have the instinct to sometimes show some deference and Canada, on the world stage, to him is not that significant.

I don't think it's deliberate. I don't think it's willful. Maybe it's worse much he's just indifferent.

Communications staff in the Prime Minister's Office have taken note of Plotkin's comments (and this blog — thanks!) and were very happy to point me at UK Prime Minister Brown's Flickr site for his spring visit to the U.S., where you will find the photo at left, which comes with this byline, supplied by the UK PMO: “Gordon Brown is welcomed to the West Wing of the White House by Acting US Chief of Protocol Gladys Boluda, 3 March 2009.”
Harper's staff were also pleased to call my attention to this quote from the Obama: “I want to again publicly thank Prime Minister Harper for being an outstanding partner to the United States. We appreciate his excellent work. We very much appreciate the Canadian people and we're looking forward to seeing them next week in both the United Nations context and the G20.”