Ottawa

Harper in the world

In our latest print edition, our man John Geddes explains the Prime Minister’s newfound fondness for going on the road to spread his message. Nut graf:

‘Beyond all the conference tables, watch for Harper to selectively use international media to assert his relevance. “It’s about directly engaging opinion leaders and policy makers,” said a senior government official. It’s also, of course, about finding ways to present Harper as a big-league statesman, at a time when his Conservative party is in trouble in the polls and facing, in Michael Ignatieff, a Liberal rival who’s easy to imagine fitting in comfortably on the international leaders’ circuit.’

David Akin’s Twitter feed from a PMO briefing demonstrates John’s point: “#pmharper in US for 2 days of questions from US media. Cdn media travelling with PM to G20/NATO get only 8 questions only over 4 days.”

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