The Ineluctably Unelectable Harper
As summer approaches, Gomery ennui inexorably leads both discouraged Conservatives and fickle journalists to resort to scapegoating as an explanation for the survival of what even Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente concedes is the “worst government in a generation”.
Canada suffers not only from a lack of standards, but when it comes to selecting political leaders, from a confusion or inversion of standards. Mr. Martin was thought to be a great candidate for Prime Minister because of his effectiveness at balancing the budget when Finance Minister; now we know him as Mr. Dithers. Polls say that more than 60% of Canadians believe Mr. Martin would lie to preserve his place in power, yet the Liberals lead the polls in Ontario by 20 basis points over the Conservatives whose leader they believe to be more honest, but less likely to be an effective leader.
In considering what it is Canadians think they are looking for in a Prime Minister, one is reminded of the story of the French butcher who, having need of legal assistance, finally, after looking over a number of lawyers, chose the fattest one.
Recently not only journalists but friends have used the unelectable label in reference to Mr. Harper. These are thoughtful men and women who see no irony in their assertion that Mr. Harper has fallen under the shadow that afflicted Robert Stanfield and later Preston Manning. They may also be more familiar with the Eastern Canadian mindset than I am.
Unelectable – just what makes one unelectable? There surely are some solid objective reasons for someone to be unelectable. One may be unqualified by reason of birthright (not a citizen), character (a convicted felon), capacity (a certified lunatic) – there may be other reasons. These are rare impediments, so the label’s source must be subjective in nature.
The label had been used in Canada before and with prophetic accuracy. Robert Stanfield was declared unelectable the moment he fumbled that football on some airport tarmac. It mattered little that he was competing for the role of Prime Minister and not wide receiver – he looked awkward with his bald pate, his Lincolnesque gawkiness without the flowing rhetoric – and hence he was unelectable. That his opponent was a Gallic extrovert, urbane, conceited, and confident served only to exaggerate the contrast between the two.
I had two occasions upon which to experience that Trudeau charm. On one of those I was also led to make the shallow and thoughtless comparison between the charisma of Trudeau and the ordinariness of Stanfield. The first was in the spring of 1968 at the law school at the University of Saskatchewan. Trudeau, then the Justice Minister, was visiting Saskatoon and at the invitation of the Dean and later Justice Minister Otto Lang (funny how these things happen). Trudeau attended a social event the law school was holding at a local curling rink. I was in a jolly mood as I recall, having led my curling team to victory in the annual Law School bonspiel (the only trophy with my name on it you will find in the display case).
Trudeau arrived and the room was abuzz – for those of us less turned on by his brilliant mind - his date, the divine Dinah Christie, was the real head turner. That this old dude could squire a gorgeous TV star made him eminently electable no matter what his politics. I was sufficiently enthralled to help Otto Lang squeeze out his 555 vote victory in the June 1968 election. (As an aside upon which I will write more later, the ability of Saskatchewan voters generally not to fall under these charisma-induced spells is evidenced in the results of that election. While the Liberals swept to power with a majority, Saskatchewan elected 2 Liberals, 6 NDP and 5 PC).
Two years later in the winter of 1970 Nancy and I attended a rally in a large indoor arena during the Canada Winter Games. The only reason we went was because Trudeau was speaking. We arrived late and were jammed in with hundreds of others near the entrance, with Trudeau only a speck at the far end of the arena. As I looked around I spied this innocuous looking bald man scrunched into a doorway not far from me. It was Robert Stanfield! No entourage, no one paying any particular attention to him. there stood the leader of the opposition.
There was pathos in that scene which we recognized even then, but for the wrong reasons. There stood the unelectable Robert Stanfield. A political cipher who we now know was a brilliant, thoughtful, kind, respectful, fiscally and socially conservative man. A man who would not have driven our country deep into debt, who would not have invoked a repressive War Measures Act, who would not have enacted a divisive and costly National Energy Program who would not have pirouetted behind the Queen’s back or flipped the bird to disgruntled folks in Salmon Arm and told farmers to practice unsavoury eating habits.
Isn't it interesting how Trudeau's arrogance and disdain for the common man was cast as a swashbuckling, irreverent gunslinger persona - one who made milquetoast Canadians stand taller; while Harper's alleged sometimes acid tongue, even when speaking the truth, is characterized as anger and vindictiveness.
So Canada turned away from the boring unelectable Stanfield in favour of the exciting Trudeau. And after we tired of his arrogance and sent him for his walk in the snow, we welcomed him back a year later because he promised to feed our hunger for excitement in a way the plodding Joe Who could never hope to.
Today the Liberal spin apparatchiks and their 5th estate minions have convinced us we are faced with a choice between Mr. Dithers and Mr. Unelectable. Though we know Mr. Dithers and his gang will lie to us and steal from us, we have survived it for years. So enough of us will choose to stay with the proverbial devil we know rather than risk the imagined one we don’t.
And just what is so devilish about Mr. Harper, besides having that unelectable aura about him? He doesn’t smile enough it seems. He doesn’t seem comfortable around crowds and he just doesn’t have that “hail fellow well met” quality we like in our politicians. He is not much for small talk and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
I would argue this unelectable label is a completely conjured construct – a brilliant piece of Liberal prestidigitation, a shell game worthy of the most craven carney barker. Margaret Wente writes that Toronto businessmen thought Harper to have less personality than an actuary. Well we assume at least one Toronto businessman thought this and he is the one she chose to quote.
I concede it is not only Ontarians who have not warmed to Mr. Harper; many Westerners have come to the same conclusion. They felt the same way about Preston Manning, and that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet in my experience, anyone who has met Mr. Manning invariably finds him to be charming, bright, humorous and passionately thoughtful about the need to make Canada a better place than it is.
Harper like Manning carrries the burden of Western roots and, most problematically for this age a strong Christian faith, and an evangelical Protestant one to boot. This may by itself drive the final nail into his unelectable coffin. In this age any secular argument against changes to social policy is quickly re-characterized as religious or based on personal morality. Thus Mr. Harper’s well reasoned arguments against the re-definition of marriage – arguments supported by numerous secular authorities and arguably by half of the Canadian citizenry – are dismissed as homophobic, moralistic, self-righteous and well just downright scary.
Canada needs a good dose of prairie pragmatism, particularly the Saskatchewan variety. During my lifetime I have seen the Saskatchewan voters embrace the CCF and its successor the NDP, the Liberals and the Conservatives. A new party, the Saskatchewan Party, is currently the official opposition in Saskatchewan. When a political party and its leadership failed to live up to its promises, it was invariably thrown from office. If it was found that malfeasance had been committed by ministers of the crown or by senior bureaucrats, as occurred in the Devine Conservative era, it didn’t take an army of lawyers and Royal Commissioners to sort things out. Offenders were charged, convicted and sentenced to jail for crimes much less egregious than those it seems certain were committed by senior members of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Unelectable means something quite different in the 306 Area Code than it does in the 905 or the 604 code. And, if a politician’s defeat in Saskatchewan is ineluctable, it is because of what he did or didn’t do, and not because of how warmly he works a crowd or how readily he abandons his principles in exchange for power.
One can only hope the summer barbeque circuit will fatten Mr. Harper up and make him more electable!
Canada suffers not only from a lack of standards, but when it comes to selecting political leaders, from a confusion or inversion of standards. Mr. Martin was thought to be a great candidate for Prime Minister because of his effectiveness at balancing the budget when Finance Minister; now we know him as Mr. Dithers. Polls say that more than 60% of Canadians believe Mr. Martin would lie to preserve his place in power, yet the Liberals lead the polls in Ontario by 20 basis points over the Conservatives whose leader they believe to be more honest, but less likely to be an effective leader.
In considering what it is Canadians think they are looking for in a Prime Minister, one is reminded of the story of the French butcher who, having need of legal assistance, finally, after looking over a number of lawyers, chose the fattest one.
Recently not only journalists but friends have used the unelectable label in reference to Mr. Harper. These are thoughtful men and women who see no irony in their assertion that Mr. Harper has fallen under the shadow that afflicted Robert Stanfield and later Preston Manning. They may also be more familiar with the Eastern Canadian mindset than I am.
Unelectable – just what makes one unelectable? There surely are some solid objective reasons for someone to be unelectable. One may be unqualified by reason of birthright (not a citizen), character (a convicted felon), capacity (a certified lunatic) – there may be other reasons. These are rare impediments, so the label’s source must be subjective in nature.
The label had been used in Canada before and with prophetic accuracy. Robert Stanfield was declared unelectable the moment he fumbled that football on some airport tarmac. It mattered little that he was competing for the role of Prime Minister and not wide receiver – he looked awkward with his bald pate, his Lincolnesque gawkiness without the flowing rhetoric – and hence he was unelectable. That his opponent was a Gallic extrovert, urbane, conceited, and confident served only to exaggerate the contrast between the two.
I had two occasions upon which to experience that Trudeau charm. On one of those I was also led to make the shallow and thoughtless comparison between the charisma of Trudeau and the ordinariness of Stanfield. The first was in the spring of 1968 at the law school at the University of Saskatchewan. Trudeau, then the Justice Minister, was visiting Saskatoon and at the invitation of the Dean and later Justice Minister Otto Lang (funny how these things happen). Trudeau attended a social event the law school was holding at a local curling rink. I was in a jolly mood as I recall, having led my curling team to victory in the annual Law School bonspiel (the only trophy with my name on it you will find in the display case).
Trudeau arrived and the room was abuzz – for those of us less turned on by his brilliant mind - his date, the divine Dinah Christie, was the real head turner. That this old dude could squire a gorgeous TV star made him eminently electable no matter what his politics. I was sufficiently enthralled to help Otto Lang squeeze out his 555 vote victory in the June 1968 election. (As an aside upon which I will write more later, the ability of Saskatchewan voters generally not to fall under these charisma-induced spells is evidenced in the results of that election. While the Liberals swept to power with a majority, Saskatchewan elected 2 Liberals, 6 NDP and 5 PC).
Two years later in the winter of 1970 Nancy and I attended a rally in a large indoor arena during the Canada Winter Games. The only reason we went was because Trudeau was speaking. We arrived late and were jammed in with hundreds of others near the entrance, with Trudeau only a speck at the far end of the arena. As I looked around I spied this innocuous looking bald man scrunched into a doorway not far from me. It was Robert Stanfield! No entourage, no one paying any particular attention to him. there stood the leader of the opposition.
There was pathos in that scene which we recognized even then, but for the wrong reasons. There stood the unelectable Robert Stanfield. A political cipher who we now know was a brilliant, thoughtful, kind, respectful, fiscally and socially conservative man. A man who would not have driven our country deep into debt, who would not have invoked a repressive War Measures Act, who would not have enacted a divisive and costly National Energy Program who would not have pirouetted behind the Queen’s back or flipped the bird to disgruntled folks in Salmon Arm and told farmers to practice unsavoury eating habits.
Isn't it interesting how Trudeau's arrogance and disdain for the common man was cast as a swashbuckling, irreverent gunslinger persona - one who made milquetoast Canadians stand taller; while Harper's alleged sometimes acid tongue, even when speaking the truth, is characterized as anger and vindictiveness.
So Canada turned away from the boring unelectable Stanfield in favour of the exciting Trudeau. And after we tired of his arrogance and sent him for his walk in the snow, we welcomed him back a year later because he promised to feed our hunger for excitement in a way the plodding Joe Who could never hope to.
Today the Liberal spin apparatchiks and their 5th estate minions have convinced us we are faced with a choice between Mr. Dithers and Mr. Unelectable. Though we know Mr. Dithers and his gang will lie to us and steal from us, we have survived it for years. So enough of us will choose to stay with the proverbial devil we know rather than risk the imagined one we don’t.
And just what is so devilish about Mr. Harper, besides having that unelectable aura about him? He doesn’t smile enough it seems. He doesn’t seem comfortable around crowds and he just doesn’t have that “hail fellow well met” quality we like in our politicians. He is not much for small talk and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
I would argue this unelectable label is a completely conjured construct – a brilliant piece of Liberal prestidigitation, a shell game worthy of the most craven carney barker. Margaret Wente writes that Toronto businessmen thought Harper to have less personality than an actuary. Well we assume at least one Toronto businessman thought this and he is the one she chose to quote.
I concede it is not only Ontarians who have not warmed to Mr. Harper; many Westerners have come to the same conclusion. They felt the same way about Preston Manning, and that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet in my experience, anyone who has met Mr. Manning invariably finds him to be charming, bright, humorous and passionately thoughtful about the need to make Canada a better place than it is.
Harper like Manning carrries the burden of Western roots and, most problematically for this age a strong Christian faith, and an evangelical Protestant one to boot. This may by itself drive the final nail into his unelectable coffin. In this age any secular argument against changes to social policy is quickly re-characterized as religious or based on personal morality. Thus Mr. Harper’s well reasoned arguments against the re-definition of marriage – arguments supported by numerous secular authorities and arguably by half of the Canadian citizenry – are dismissed as homophobic, moralistic, self-righteous and well just downright scary.
Canada needs a good dose of prairie pragmatism, particularly the Saskatchewan variety. During my lifetime I have seen the Saskatchewan voters embrace the CCF and its successor the NDP, the Liberals and the Conservatives. A new party, the Saskatchewan Party, is currently the official opposition in Saskatchewan. When a political party and its leadership failed to live up to its promises, it was invariably thrown from office. If it was found that malfeasance had been committed by ministers of the crown or by senior bureaucrats, as occurred in the Devine Conservative era, it didn’t take an army of lawyers and Royal Commissioners to sort things out. Offenders were charged, convicted and sentenced to jail for crimes much less egregious than those it seems certain were committed by senior members of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Unelectable means something quite different in the 306 Area Code than it does in the 905 or the 604 code. And, if a politician’s defeat in Saskatchewan is ineluctable, it is because of what he did or didn’t do, and not because of how warmly he works a crowd or how readily he abandons his principles in exchange for power.
One can only hope the summer barbeque circuit will fatten Mr. Harper up and make him more electable!
posted by Ben Buan | 10:39 a.m.
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