(The Guardian) Barack Obama has urged Canadians to re-elect Justin Trudeau, an apparently unprecedented endorsement of a candidate in a Canadian election by a former American president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obama tweeted on Wednesday that he was proud to work with Trudeau and described him as a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term,\u201d Obama wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau later responded with his own tweet: \u201cThanks my friend, we\u2019re working hard to keep our progress going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau is in a tough re-election fight before Monday\u2019s parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said that might have something to do with Obama\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTrudeau is in real danger,\u201d Bothwell said. \u201cIf I were a Liberal (party) campaigner I would quietly point with pride to Obama\u2019s endorsement. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d run around toting it as a major political issue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Bothwell said you would have to go back more than 100 years to find an American president intervening in a Canadian federal election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, visited Toronto in 1917 when Canada was having an election about conscription and spoke in favor of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, called Obama\u2019s endorsement rare and said it possibly has not happened before but he doesn\u2019t think it will move the polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn fact, some people may feel this is an unwarranted foreign intrusion in Canada\u2019s election,\u201d Wiseman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obama also endorsed Emmanuel Macron for president in France\u2019s 2017 election, and he warned British voters against backing leaving the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau formed a close relationship with Obama when he was president and the two were pictured having dinner in Ottawa earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(The Guardian) Barack Obama has urged Canadians to re-elect Justin Trudeau, an apparently unprecedented endorsement of a candidate in a Canadian election by a former American president. Obama tweeted on Wednesday that he was proud to work with Trudeau and described him as a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change. \u201cThe world needs his progressive… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3952,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions\/3952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}