[Stephen Harper has dropped in for a visit with Mr. and Mrs. Sensible Shoes in Potemkin, Alberta. Sitting on the edge of the settee, diabetic music dripping in the background, and forcing a gluey rictus, he intones: "I think families are just about the keenest things there can be. I have a family, you know. Sometimes we sit around and play cards." Shit-eating voice comes over: "Stephen Harper. Not a resentful block of wood. A leader."]
When I saw the first fuzzy Harper ad in the pre-election days, what immediately flashed to mind was the image of Boris Yeltsin boogalooing his way to re-election in the mid-90s, with the help of hired hands from the U.S. There he was, in shirtsleeves, up on stage with some pop tart, shaking his booty and all eight of his fingers, sweating, letting his inner lumpkin out, doing his version of Clinton-plays-the-sax. Not surprisingly, he won (as did Bill). Both saw how merging politics and showbiz could work to change the channel and divert the electorate. Of course, Boris didn't need to change channels; he controlled all of them in the shiny new Russian plutocracy.
We have, in Canada, the mirror image of the political situation as it stood in the 90s. This time, instead of the right being fractured, it is the centre-left. One sure sign that the Conservatives are thriving is the spectacle of the NDP leader going around saying he should be seriously considered for the post of Prime Minister, something that looks like a bit of a long shot for Jack Layton. This situation is made possible only because Stephane Dion has been unable to connect with enough Canadians, if recent polls are any indication.
This is a pity in a way. Dion is much loved by anglophone federalists in the Liberal party for his part in challenging Lucien Bouchard in the years following the referendum, keeping Bouchard and his successor Bernard "Red Rag" Landry, on the defensive. In the process, though, he cemented a reputation in much of Quebec as a vendu, and to this day, he is widely loathed in his home province. It certainly says something about his courage that he has persisted in the face of so much ill will in Quebec, never bowing. Nevertheless, he has not, over the two years he has had to prepare the Liberals for an election, connected with Quebec enough to stave off the likelihood of a big harvest of seats for Harper in Quebec ["J'ai une famille. C'est vrai."] If this happens, we are into a Tory majority. Only the spectacle of spittle-flecked Reform Party hyenas being let out of their cages to howl about abortion and the triple-E Senate, and accuse people of supporting child porn, as happened in the 2004 election, will be enough to forestall a Tory majority.
The events of the last week have not done much to dampen such fears. The puffin taking a crap on Dion was straight out of the dying days of the Ontario Tories' Common Sense Devolution in 03. Harper had to step in and apologize for both the crapping puffin and for the sleazy imputation by one of his zeal-bots that criticism from the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan was to be taken with a grain of salt because the dad was a Liberal supporter, so what does he know? Anyway, the perverse effect of these "gaffes" is to burnish Harper's self-styled reputation as a decisive leader. In fact, it is certainly easy to imagine this crop of Tories staging examples of Harper riding herd on his collection of mouth breathers, reassuring voters in the centre that he has banished the fanatics. Having a reputation as a control freak works for him here.
The meltdown of the American financial system will also help Harper appeal to nervous voters, who are not likely to migrate to Stephane Dion's Green Shift, let alone to Jack Layton. However, that could easily change if there are any more serious reverses in the economy and Harper looks as powerless as any of the other party leaders to do anything about them.
All in all, a bad news week if you think a Harper majority is bad news.
As for the American contest, the ongoing self-inflicted soiling of John McCain's name is, if nothing else, grist for many a playwright or novelist. Oliver Stone would be a fool not to do a McCain picture, say, in eighteen months. By that time, he will have been in the political wilderness for a while, or he is President. As it stands now, there is a frisson of fear among many nervous Democrats that McCain will repeat what Poppy Bush did to Dukakis, create fake controversies over hot-button social issues to distract from larger issues.
It is chilling to reflect on the Repugnicans' propensity to nominate tickets with one quite apparently capable person and one complete loon, and if I were the producer of the Andy Griffiths Show, I'd sue the bastards for ripping off the Andy/Barney Fife dynamic. W's daddy did it with Dan I-Can't-Spell-Potato Quayle. In W's case, the genius idea was to put the "genius" in the Naval Observatory and the idiot in the White House. With the McCain-Palin ticket, it is truly hard to decide who is supposed to be the leader, and who the clown. Is it the guy who vetted her for all of fifteen minutes, or the woman who, until she is reprogrammed by Dr. McCain-enstein, will go on saying the same patently false things? Instead of the intrepid leader of the Alaskan National Guard being with her troops in Iraq, we get Sarah being able to step over the Iraq-Kuwaiti border so that she could say she was in Iraq. That would be as far as she got.
The Obama campaign, to its credit, is fighting back in the ad war, but every time they have to respond to McCain, instead of making McCain respond to them, they let McCain define the campaign. The question then becomes, if McCain sets the agenda of the campaign, do you let McCain continue to act like the snivelling sell-out he has become, and let the American people judge what they see, and hope they will be as revolted as you are? It's a big risk.
In any event, one hopes that come election day, all Americans will look around them and see what has happened to them over the last eight years of extremist Repugs running the store.
Palins of the Day: I know I have fallen behind, so I will make up for it with a few:
Suvie, Wiper, Flit.
No comments:
Post a Comment