In article <CNucnd0R3tHj3YSiXTWJjQ@comcast.com>, xfwsexyg6001@sneakemail.com 
says...

>Your need to ridicule a national leader is telling. I guess that's what you
>do when you have nothing else. No one outside Canada ridicules your Prime
>Minister because few know who Jean Chretien is or what he does and it
>doesn't effect their lives.

I don't "need" to, but it is so easy....

However....

True enough... but I don't think anyone in Canada thinks Chretien is our 
"leader", he is just the PM, agree or disagree with him....  Of I course I 
can't speak for anyone but myself, but the idea of 'ein fuhrer' just doesn't 
work here, whoever.....  We don't need no stinking leader...  I would have 
thought even less so in America, but in the popular mind, if not constitutional 
reality, you (that is to say Americans in general) seem to give your president 
more personal importance than any else in the western world does their 
respective [PM, President, Poobah, Whatever] an importance with no basis in 
your constitutional arrangements.... [bully pulpit &c].  Stand up for 
democracy, dammit!  Screw the politicians.....

Cheers,
dba