On Keystone, it’s been a series of political miscalculations for Harper

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper blamed the latest delay in approving the Keystone XL pipeline on "politics." It begs a simple question: why has Mr. Harper failed at the politics?

Securing approval for the pipeline, after all, has been very important to Mr. Harper. His foreign affairs minister, John Baird, called it the government's number-one foreign-policy priority back in 2011.

It's now 2014, and the U.S. State Department has delayed the process yet again, to wait for the outcome legal challenges that will, by lucky coincidence, probably put off any decision until after November's mid-term elections in the United States. In other words, wait till next year.

When the Mr. Harper's government heard that Good Friday announcement, it nearly sputtered: "We are disappointed that politics continue to delay a decision on Keystone XL," said Mr. Harper's communications director, Jason MacDonald.

Politics? Imagine. A highly-charged issue influenced by politics! No wonder Canadian politicians are upset. Such a thing could never happen in Ottawa.

Diplomacy is about politics. Instead of expressing shock at that, Mr. Harper should look back on what's gone wrong with his politicking.

Some argue Mr. Harper could persuade U.S. President Barack Obama to approve the pipeline by proposing regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions in Canada generally – to pacify environmental activists the president doesn't want to offend. Mr. Obama's former ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, had said that Canadian action on climate change would improve the reception for Canadian oil.

But Andrew Leach, a University of Alberta energy economist, thinks that Keystone has become too much of a symbol for that to work now. Most U.S. opponents would only be satisfied with regulations too stringent they would render the pipeline pointless, he argues. You have to roll back the clock to see where Mr. Harper went wrong.

Of course, there were unpredictable headwinds. Unusually stiff local opposition to the route emerged in Nebraska. Spills damaged faith in oil and pipeline safety. There was also opposition from environmentalists who argued the pipeline would encourage expansion of the oil sands, and send greenhouse-gas emissions rising.

But Mr. Harper laid everything on the economic arguments. That must have seemed logical. Polls, then and now, show most Americans favour the pipeline – about 65 per cent in a March poll for ABC News – even though many think it's environmentally risky, because they believe it will be good for the economy.

So Mr. Harper told U.S. journalists that the decision on the pipeline was a "complete no-brainer." It would, he said, create jobs, and ensure that the United States doesn't have to rely on dictatorial foreign regimes for oil. Mr. Harper's government allied itself with business groups, Republicans and conservative Democrats, to push for the pipeline.

He and his government also stressed how fundamentally important the pipeline is to Canada. In that, they were helped by Alberta cabinet ministers fretting that without Keystone, the province's bitumen would be "landlocked." The Canadian ambassador to Washington, Gary Doer, told American audiences that one reason Keystone XL was good for the U.S. is that more U.S. trucks and equipment would be sold to booming oil sands developers.

The problem, for Mr. Harper, is that though the economic argument swayed many, there was an intensely-opposed minority – and they are part of Mr. Obama's political base.

They began to seize on the rejection of Keystone as a symbol of action on greenhouse gases – and the Canadian government's arguments, in a strange way, seemed to push the idea along, Mr. Leach said.

After all, this was just one pipeline, but Canadian politicians argued it was crucial to Canada, and that Alberta bitumen would remain locked up without it – only encouraging the notion that Keystone XL was critical to the oil sands future, Mr. Leach said.

The Canadian government sought to argue that the pipeline wouldn't have any impact on emission, because the bitumen would just be sold to somewhere else. But since Mr. Doer was telling Americans that approval of Keystone would do the U.S. good by boosting Alberta's economy, it was a mixed message at best.

And Canadian regulation of greenhouse gases? Though Mr. Leach believes it wouldn't diminish opposition to Keystone now, it might have been effective in preventing the opposition from snowballing. Mr. Harper's government could have used those regulations to argue that the oil sands could fit into a low-carbon future, Mr. Leach said; instead, they made it a choice of one or the other.

All that was part of political miscalculation. As a politician, Mr. Harper should have known Mr. Obama would not easily turn his back on his base. He thought pressure on this "no-brainer" from Keystone allies in the U.S. would force Mr. Obama to choose between his base and the majority. But the president found another option.