Vroom, vroom. Sure. We all just can’t wait to leap into the fray. Our breaths are bated. The thrill of victory; the agony of defeat; the verbal thrust and parry, the rapier wit, the…
OK cut that. It’s a bore. This campaign hasn’t yet begun and it’s already terminal. No one in Canada – except for a gaggle of suits in Ottawa – wants a federal campaign now. There’s no great issue. There’s no titanic clash of personalities. There’s no shocking scandal. The economy? Please, give us a very large break. We’re to sustain interest in this circus for six weeks based on the off chance that there might, at some future point, be a recession?
Stephen, Stephane, you two share the same first name, almost. You’re a lot alike, you fellas. Won’t you please take a deep breath, grasp each other manfully by the forearm the way they do in old Viking movies, and just…get along? And Jack? Gilles? Can you two just… go away?
Ah but these men don’t want to get along any more. For nearly three years ‘getting along’ meant that Harper laid about with the Cat ’o nine tails and Dion jumped like a swabbie on the deck of the good ship Bounty. That worked: Everybody knew the rules. It was what your physicists call a stable system.
But then this past summer the spirit of Mackenzie King came unto Dion and imbued him with restless ambition and a golden-greenish glow of confidence, and it came to pass that the Green Shift was delivered unto the Liberal policy makers; and they saw that it was good.
Now, there’s this wee problem here, which we now interrupt this column to note: Canadians don’t get the Green Shift quite yet. That’s because, though we like the notion of saving planet Earth, we don’t get what Dion is talking about – ever. That’s because he says things that sound like this: A government to not must have the confidence people of, bankrupt is. Harper lied to you he has!
Truly, what better model for a national leader than Yoda? If only Dion were doing it intentionally. Thought experiment: If Stephen Harper were a young Jedi savant, what colour would his light-saber be? Next question: Would he wield a scimitar like Count Dooku or a staff like Darth Maul? And would he be tougher than Darth Sidious or not as tough?
But we digress. The point being, Dion changed the rules. He looked poised to bring down the government this fall. This, Harper could not abide. For this prime minister does not play defense well, or often. He attacks. He retains the initiative, or tries to, always. So he broke his own fixed-date election law to do so? Pshaw. Details.
Dear reader, here’s what we’re left with if we boil this down: Two guys, both clever, both stubborn, both ambitious, neither a strong unifying force or a barn-burning orator, neither deserving, really, of majority power; and a country that had been running rather smoothly, all things considered, with these two holding each other in check. Until they messed it up.
Think of the great canyons of disagreement that once divided Liberals from Conservatives. Does even a single one remain? Free trade? Nope. Medicare? Er, no. Official bilingualism? Nyet.
The Afghan mission could have divided the country, but the two major parties thankfully found unanimity there. Even on the environment, where the Liberals will claim there is no common ground at all, there is plenty. These Conservatives pay lip service to climate change and to the Green movement in a way that the old Alliance party would never have imagined.
So really the only question for voters is this: Which ambitious, middle-aged policy wonk do you favour? Or whom do you dislike the least?
Small wonder then that Canadian pundits are already drawing morose comparisons between our election and theirs.
They have a guy who was tortured by the Viet Cong and survived. They have another guy who can move a crowd of 80,000 to tears. They have a woman who looks like a Victoria’s Secret model and sounds like she wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond to whip off one of her stiletto heels and bludgeon a liberal senseless with it. Now that? That, my friends, is a popularity contest.
Harper and Dion? Not so much. In political terms this is a war of choice for both. That will bring a cost. Neither gladiator should be surprised if, come October, he is precisely where he began.
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Contact mdentandt@thesuntimes.ca.
