Bloomberg News has a long article about how President Obama's long delays in the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada has strained and damaged U.S.-Canada relations. One angle in the piece that struck me as undercovered elsewhere is the role of the Republican governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, in scuttling the project:
For Obama, the political calculus of Nebraska was indirect yet important. The national campaign had little interest in the state's five electoral votes, Bob Kerrey, the Democratic Senate candidate, recounted. Yet with a Republican governor opposed, it raised the pain point with environmentalists for the president to say yes.
One other point is worth mentioning. Remember the whole line of attack against George W. Bush that he had harmed our relationships with our European allies by going to war in Iraq? Here President Obama has done just as much damage to our political relations with Canada, yet as an issue in the press (other than this Bloomberg story) or in the American political debate it's pretty much nonexistent.