Yes, We Can -- Eh?

By Al Kamen
Friday, April 18, 2008

Virgin Mobile Canada, which has been featuring U.S. political figures in newspaper ads for its cellular telephone service, has, as promised, unveiled a trio featuring Sen. Barack Obama (D- Ill.). These follow ads starring former New York governor Eliot L. Spitzer as Love Client No. 9, who is tired of being "treated like a number," and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), depicted thinking, "I wish my bill weren't so out of control."

Two of the Obama ads show him giving speeches. In one he's hoping "my time is finally here," and in the other he "can't wait to call the shots." Both ads tout the flexibility of the company's calling plans.

But the third ad -- we're told it's by far the most popular up north -- is the old bathing-suit shot, with Obama thinking, "Who cares if I'm a little wet behind the ears?"

"Experience isn't everything," the ad continues. "Being the new kid on the block has its perks. You get to put aside tired old ways of thinking and look at the world in a bright new light . . . just like Virgin Mobile's monthly packages do."

The overall ad campaign has apparently been a big hit. But it has been grossly unfair to Republicans. Not a single mention so far of the GOP standard-bearer, Sen. John McCain. (R-Ariz.).

Might be because the Canadians, more liberal than folks here, are a bit gaga over the untested Obama, according to polling earlier this month, and not enamored of McCain.

Despite Obama's bad-mouthing of NAFTA -- wildly popular up north -- Canadians asked which U.S. presidential candidate they liked most favored him over McCain by 39 percent to 8 percent. Obama enjoys nearly double McCain's support, even among folks who said they were conservatives.

The poll of 1,000 Canadians, conducted by Harris/Decima, gave Obama a big lead among men and a one-point lead even among women. He had a nine-point lead over Clinton, despite her husband's enormous popularity in Canada. McCain had the support of only 4 percent of Canadian women.

But they're not voting down here.

So Much for 'Judge Not'

The timing could have been better. President Bush, greeting Pope Benedict XVI at the White House on Wednesday, spoke warmly of the pope's arrival in this country, saying he came just when "we need your message."

"In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded," Bush said, "we need your message that all human life is sacred, and that 'each of us is willed, each of us is loved' [applause] and your message that 'each of us is willed, each of us is loved and each of us is necessary.' "

The warm greeting came just minutes after the Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 to uphold the constitutionality of lethal injections as a means of executing condemned prisoners, a position the administration supported and all five Catholic justices agreed was constitutional.

The pope is, of course, a hard-liner against capital punishment.

Sorry, No Plugs

John McCain's poor showing among Canadians may reflect a deep-seated and hardly admirable prejudice. The fact may be that, in their hearts, they just don't like bald or balding people.

Neither do Americans, at least not as president.

The last follically challenged man to be elected president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who won in 1952 and again in '56, running against the balding Adlai Stevenson. McCain is not quite in Eisenhower's league in terms of the shiny pate, but he's getting there.

Public relations guru Peter Berk, of -- where else? -- Beverly Hills, alerted us to this phenomenon and suggested that we do a "story -- lighthearted or more serious -- looking at the connection between leadership and balding, whether in the White House, in the workplace or in just about any other public environment."

He said we could "include comments from one of the nation's leading hair transplant surgeons, Dr. William Rassman."

Think we'll pass.

From Cartels to Codels

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has quietly led eight congressional delegations to Colombia in the past six months to promote the great benefits of free trade and win support for the proposed trade agreement with that country.

In all, 45 House members and 10 senators have trekked down on military jets to see, firsthand, the progress in Colombia's development and a decline in violence in a country home to the once-notorious Medellin drug cartel.

We're told this was not quite the tightly scripted dog-and-pony show that the military has for lawmakers going to Iraq. The bipartisan groups wandered the streets of Medellin -- without bodyguards -- and could chat with the locals and hear for themselves what folks down there thought about the progress, said USTR spokesman Sean Spicer. (Of course, one would expect a high level of contentment in the responses, given the context.)

These weekend jaunts were deemed so successful that the USTR started imbedding media on them, even allowing C-SPAN to tag along and produce what Spicer called the "first ever codel-mentary," which he said would be aired soon.

The codels obviously were not Loop-recommended, because they did not permit spouses and left on Friday afternoons and came back on Sunday nights. That's not even enough time to do any decent shopping, except perhaps for a quick foray at the duty-free. On the other hand, we're most unhappy at not receiving even a courtesy invite.

In any event, the trips apparently failed. The trade agreement is stalled in the House.

The Class Struggle

Bad news for the half-dozen or so Treasury Department aides planning to go to an international conference on financial crimes set for May 26-29 in South Korea. Seems Financial Crimes Enforcement Network Director James H. Freis Jr. has decreed that anyone taking the 15-hour flight to Seoul will travel coach.

"We recognize that business class travel is allowable for this trip under travel rules," FinCEN chief of staff Andy Fishburn said in an e-mail to aides last week. "However, due to the size of the delegation, the director has decided that, to keep the delegation cost to a minimum, economy class is warranted and prudent." Even Freis is going steerage, we were told.

The price difference looks to be as much as $4,000 per traveler. Of course, Fishburn said, "there are no objections to travelers using their own miles to upgrade their tickets" -- such an upgrade, if available, could run many thousands of miles, depending on the airline and other factors.

But wait! It gets worse. Don't even think about spending a couple of days before or after the conference on the government dime to enjoy the splendors of Seoul and its environs.

You can arrive, say, Sunday night for a Tuesday-morning session, "but Saturday arrival deserves a closer review," Fishburn warned. "On the tail end, if work completes on Thursday afternoon, travel home should begin [no later than] Friday."

And you'll have to bring your own Ambien.