Saturday, July 12 Seated at the next table in a downtown bistro, I once chanced to overhear -- well, I shouldn't say who it was: let's just say he came from a prominent Canadian family that built a real estate empire, and lost it. "We used to think," he was telling his lunch partner, "that it didn't matter how much debt you had, as long as you had the assets to back it up. But now, now we realize, no, you've also got to have the cash flow to service it." This man, you understand, was at one time responsible for investing hundreds of millions of dollars. But now he realizes cash flow matters.

The incident confirmed a theory of mine, namely that people in high places really do say the sorts of obvious things to each other in private that you would expect would not need saying. Too many clever screenwriters have convinced us that the conversations of the great are conducted in a kind of sophisticated short-hand; everything, or everything that might occur to any of us to say, is understood. But on those rare occasions when we are privy to their secret thoughts, they turn out to be every bit as trite as our own.

They understand events on more or less the same level -- i.e. just barely -- as we do.

Which brings us to the Prime Minister, and his unintended baring of the soul at this week's NATO summit. As he chatted with the Belgian Prime Minister, unaware that a nearby microphone was on, Jean Chretien was plainly scandalized at the way foreign policy is made in the United States.

Just as evident was his own pride in how well he understood this, and how he had played it to his advantage. Quite what the smiling Belgian made of his friend's compulsive prattle was not so clear.

The story might be dismissed as silly-season filler, but for the insights it afforded into Chretien's character. Aside from the truck-stop braggadocio, what is most striking in all his comments is the utter lack of ironic awareness. It's not as if Chretien said anything that was not already common knowledge. In the Canadian press, this was hailed as "candour." But "banality" would serve as well. So would "rank hypocrisy." Consider his most immediate complaint, that President Clinton's stand on NATO expansion had been taken not for high-minded reasons of state, but "for short-term political reasons, to win elections." Goodness. This is to be distinguished from Canadian foreign policy, which these days seems motivated largely by a desire to suck up to France (something about a referendum, I believe). Or why else did Canada side with those European countries, France included, that insisted on admitting five new members into NATO, rather than the three that the U.S. and Britain favoured?

On the other hand, there's always Cuba, where the guiding principle is more in the classic tradition of Canadian diplomacy: annoy the Americans, at least in public. Forget human rights, or hegemony. As the Prime Minister explained to his Belgian friend, "I like to stand up to the Americans. It's popular.... The Cuba affair, I was the first one to stand up. And people like that." This is evidently not to be confused with "short-term political reasons," though we've heard a lot less about it since the election.

But then, Clinton has to deal with those shameless members of Congress.

"They sell their votes!" Chretien was shocked enough to report. "'You want me to vote on NATO, then you have to vote to build me a new bridge in my constituency.'" It is true that, under the American system of checks and balances, members of the legislative branch are free to demand some benefit for their constituents as the price of their support for the government.

Whereas under Canada's parliamentary system, the rewards tend to be more personal: a Senate seat, a consulate, a job on the Federal Court.

As for Chretien, he was not above striking his own deals with Clinton, such as the one that put Canadian soldiers in harm's way in Haiti. "So he phones me," he tells the Belgian PM. "Okay, I send my soldiers, and then afterwards I ask for something in exchange." The ethical distinctions are clear: Where Congress trades bridges for NATO, Chretien would trade Canadian lives for, say, a settlement of the B.C. salmon dispute. Not that Clinton is in a position to deliver. Chretien recalls that after the two had agreed to a deal, "the [U.S.] negotiator says I cannot accept this without the consent of 35 different organizations, which all have veto powers." Of course, we have those in Canada, too. They're called provinces.

Easily the most nauseating moment in the entire exchange was Chretien's boast that Clinton had thanked him for brokering a deal over NATO expansion. "He was very happy with me. 'Jean,' he said, 'you saved my bacon.'" There is the Chretien doctrine, in a nutshell: the complete guide to dealing with the United States. Thumb your nose in public. Tug your forelock in private. And brag of your duplicity to your friends.