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TPM Reader ST comments from down under …

Hi Josh,

Just wanted to comment on that recent story above [Email Subject Line: About the recent story on US ambassador’s interference in Canadian Politics].

I’m wondering if this sort of US meddling in local politics isn’t a standard policy for the Bush administration. You speak about the standard way that ambassadors behave, but in Australia, we’ve already seen exactly this sort of thing happen. The previous US ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer (naturally an old Bush friend and business partner), made notable public comment on Australian politics, especially during our federal election last year. He was openly friendly with the conservative government (still in power and highly supportive of the US – sending troops to Iraq etc.), and was happy to publicly condemn anti-war or anti-US policy sentiment from the Labor party opposition leader (who lost the election and is now out of politics altogether).

This Wikipedia piece gives a good outline of what happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Schieffer

Just thought I’d mention this to illustrate that this is an action that might not be so out of the ordinary.

Any other recent historical perspective about how out of the ordinary any of this is?

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