Bush-Mulroney summit is the same old ballgame

OTTAWA Summit meetings between the president of the UnitedStates and the prime minister of Canada have about as much to do withdiplomacy as throwing out the first ball has to do with baseball.

In fact, the two countries have discovered how to demonstratethe amiable phoniness of the two by combining them.

President Bush stopped by Toronto on Tuesday. He grinned a lot.He told Prime Minister Brian Mulroney he liked Canada and was gladhis northern neighbor was taking an interest in Mexico, his southernneighbor. He said the two countries would start soon to talk aboutacid rain.

Mulroney grinned a lot as well. He did a me-too act for theassembled press, chiming in with the same answer to each question.

But the way the pair got on the front pages of Canadiannewspapers was by tossing out the first balls at the Toronto BlueJays' Sky Dome opener.

The idea of annual summit meetings between the president andprime minister was hatched nearly six years ago when Mulroney hadjust come to power. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Canada and the United States had gone through some rocky timesduring the tenure of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who liked to tweak theeagle's tailfeathers every once in a while.

Mulroney was sure he could get along better with Washington. Hehit it off with President Ronald Reagan. The two shared an Irishbackground and an Irish sense of humor. They were pals. Bush andMulroney, by contrast, are official friends.

But perhaps official friendship works better.

At the first big Reagan-Mulroney summit meeting in Quebec Cityin 1985, a sheaf of agreements was signed, including one on acidrain, the airborne pollution thought to be caused in large part byemissions from power plants and factories. Canada produces abouthalf its own acid rain. But the other half is produced by U.S.sources and drifts across the world's longest undefended border.

In time, Mulroney discovered that Reagan didn't really believein acid rain and was disinclined to do anything about it. Mulroneyyelled at Reagan for that. Reagan grinned and the two continued tobe pals.

The Bush administration has been different from a Canadian pointof view. There's just as much grinning when Mulroney gets togetherwith the current president, but the meetings have been gettingshorter. In the latest summit, they spent just one hour alone.

But the two countries seem to be making real progress away fromthe limelight of summits. The Clean Air Act pending in Congress andits measures aimed at reducing acid rain are evidence of that.

Canada isn't content with a U.S. law; it wants an internationalagreement. That's what the com-ing talks, which may start thissummer, will be about.

Beneath the smiles, Canada is also worried about moves toward afree trade agreement between the United States and Mexico.

Mulroney's baseball meeting with Bush was a supposed to be partof a comeback strategy for the Canadian prime minister who is nowlower in the polls than any government leader in Canadian history.

But it didn't work that way either.

When the two walked onto the baseball diamond, Mulroney was metby a rolling chorus of boos, not for his pitching ability but for histax policies. The president and prime minister pretended not tonotice and kept on grinning.