At the Super Bowl on Sunday night, former U.S. presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton entered the stadium side by side.
The two men, having agreed to jointly chair their country's private efforts to raise money for Asian tsunami victims, have been appearing together quite a bit these days.
The Bush and Clinton families are political enemies. Mr. Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush for president and campaigned last year against his son, George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton might just wind up running for president some day against Jeb Bush, Republican Governor of Florida and brother of the incumbent President.
Despite these political rivalries, the former presidents -- indeed, all former presidents -- get along for public purposes. Former presidents sometimes appear together to support worthy purposes and on important national occasions. Whatever their private views, the dignity of the office they held imposes on them an obligation of public civility.
Contrast this admirable U.S. characteristic with the way that former Canadian prime ministers treat each other, a contrast that came to mind yesterday while watching Jean Chrétien testify at an inquiry established by his bitter rival, Paul Martin, to diminish Mr. Chrétien.
There might still be a handful of Canadians gullible enough to believe Mr. Martin's insistence that he set up the Gomery inquiry to "get to the bottom" of the sponsorship affair.
The remaining Canadians, the ones not born yesterday, know the inquiry was a political gambit by Mr. Martin to distance himself from Mr. Chrétien.
The civil war that ran so deep within the Liberal Party explained more about the origins of the Gomery inquiry than any abiding desire to "get to the bottom" of the affair. The Martinites had been in a hurry to take over the party leadership, having hungered for it for so long. As a result, they -- and not Mr. Chrétien -- fell on the hand grenade of Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's report on sponsorships. Rather than trying to restrict the damage done by that grenade, the Martinites turned the report into the equivalent of a powerful political bomb that damaged everything it touched, including the Liberal Party. Mr. Chrétien's predictable testimony yesterday, and Mr. Martin's tomorrow, reprised the civil war.
More broadly, this war highlights how badly Canadian political leaders treat each other.
Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker couldn't stand each other, and it showed. Pierre Trudeau didn't dislike Mr. Pearson so much as disagree with him on important issues. So anxious -- one could say discourteous -- was Mr. Trudeau toward Mr. Pearson that he gave his predecessor no time to say farewell to Parliament before calling the 1968 election.
Brian Mulroney tried to be courteous to Mr. Trudeau for a while, sending him government documents in Montreal and dispatching government officials to brief him on the proposed Meech Lake constitutional accord. Mr. Trudeau not only opposed Meech Lake, as was his right, but he made his opposition highly personal, calling Mr. Mulroney names. Mr. Chrétien treated Mr. Mulroney very shabbily, and not just in the Airbus inquiry. He would not even invite him to the state reception for Nelson Mandela, even though Mr. Mulroney had fought hard against apartheid within the Commonwealth.
Mr. Chrétien managed to behave decently when the official portrait of Mr. Mulroney was unveiled on Parliament Hill, but he looked as if he desperately wanted to be somewhere else, which he likely did.
Relations between Mr. Chrétien and the Liberal leader he replaced, John Turner, were frosty. Relations between Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Martin, decent enough during most of their time together in office, turned horrid toward the end and poisonous during Mr. Chrétien's waning time as prime minister. Mr. Martin did at least ask Mr. Turner to head the Canadian delegation monitoring the Ukrainian elections.
You will say that the parliamentary system does this to men. U.S. presidents are heads of state, and therefore respect the dignity of the country's highest office.
But even in Britain, where parliamentary debates are rough and tumble all the time, a public decorum applies among former prime ministers. Margaret Thatcher, one of the most polarizing figures in British history, treated her party predecessor, Edward Heath, quite miserably. Tony Blair, however, has treated her respectfully.
That is more than can be said for Canadian prime ministers and their predecessors.