By the narrowest of margins, anti-Trump posturing and pugnacity was more influential with voters on Monday than recollections of the shambles by almost every measurement of the government’s previous ten years. Trump is an extraordinarily effective president for the Americans, but his carnival manner and flippant bombast does not travel well, (though it is often entertaining). His trade argument against Canada, as many have pointed out, is rubbish since there would be no American trade deficit with this country if energy were excluded and much of the oil that we sell the United States is at a knock- down price and is sold on by them to third parties for a large and easy profit. As I wrote in this column when he started his nonsense about Canada becoming the 51st state, instead of every politician in the country putting on the uniform and airs of Captain Canada, and Justin Trudeau telling Trump that Canada would “collapse” but that we would make a manful effort to raise our contribution to our own national defence to  two per cent of GDP as we have pledged, but in five years, we should have countered the U.S. president with hauteur and ridicule.