Open and Shut: Why America Has Barack Obama, and Canada Has Stephen Harper

JOHN IBBITSON is one of Canada's best known and most respected journalists and authors. Since arriving in 1999 at the Globe and Mail, he has served as Washington bureau chief, Ottawa bureau chief, chief political writer and, since 2015, writer-at-large. He co-authored Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, which has been translated into nine languages and is sold around the world, as well as the national bestseller The Big Shift, both with Darrell Bricker. He is also the author of Stephen Harper, the bestselling and award-winning biography of Canada's 22nd prime minister. His writing for fiction includes The Landing, which won the 2008 Governor General's Award for Children's Literature. In March 2018, on its tenth anniversary, the book was republished by Kids Can Press. John currently serves as the general editor of the "Globe History Project," a series of historical essays exploring the newspaper's influence on Canadian history, which will be published by McClelland & Stewart in 2024. John Ibbitson lives and writes in Ottawa.

Last November America elected its first black president. Canada, too, went to the polls that month. The difference for the two nations was remarkable: Americans had a clear choice between an indecisive, has-been who represented at best more of the same and a progressive, eloquent, African American, the first ever black presidential candidate. As Ibbitson remarks, "What were Canadians being offered? An overweight economist who couldn't offer an honest smile to save his life, and a backpacking political scientist whose English made your ears bleed. Who elected these guys? Practically no one."