New Rumblings

PM Harper is on a tour it seems, trying to lay the groundwork for a fall election. Granted, I expected one last fall, but this bizarre stalemate seems set in concrete, and there is a lack of leadership with an addiction to some perceived glory of the current roles. Harper is basking in one of the most stable minority governments in Canadian history, and Dion is sitting under the sunlamp of weak leadership, convincing himself that it's the tropical sun he's basking in on the ramparts of his palace.

In reality, the Harper government stability is built on a foundation of secrecy, bumbling politicians whose only success comes from being muzzled to ensure that they can't commit immediate and irrevocable political suicide by opening their mouths. They have actually, really written a manual, distributed to their people on how to stonewall committees to ensure that they don't progress towards logical, meaningful conclusions - because those are typically against the Conservative direction of the right-wing, US wannabe vision.

Meanwhile, the NDP and the Greens are further splitting the centre and left ensuring that a party with approval of a quarter of the population can continue to sit there doing nothing.

Dion is the biggest failure of this situation, in that rather than going to the polls on a platform built around something he stood for, he's happily capitulated on anything and everything that was posed to him, all to maintain his weak, cardboard leadership.

With Harper's tour spouting that he may have to call an election because of the House's dysfunction, Dion could lose the only freebie he could have mustered, the strength of conviction on some random topic. Now he'll have to go into an election with both weak leadership, a history of capitulation, and no central focussing principle. What's most laughable is that Harpers mantra about dysfunction in the house is in no small part attributable to his party. They literally wrote the book on obfuscation and dysfunction, well the manual anyway.

So my bottomline is still that an election is desperately needed to clean up stalemate that we see now. Problem is, I'm not convinced any of those there now have the guts to go forward with it.

I like to think of the best outcome imaginable. At this point, all I can think of is that the stalemate could result in a gentle flip of leading parties in a minority with the same weak support numbers that have persisted for years now. The result being a Dion government coalition with Jack Layton. That's also in some ways a worst case, 'cause it entrenches Dion making it hard to bring in a stronger leader, while giving the Conservatives the opportunity to find someone more charismatic. The good thing is that I'm skeptical they could find a 'Reform aka CRAP aka Conservative' figure who has charisma and a closet that is not bulging with inopportune, bigoted comments, reactionary policy and skeletons to boot.

So, yeah, I'm hopeful something will happen in the coming months - more than the few by-elections currently scheduled. But I'm still skeptical we'll get a better political landscape out of it. Hopefully some vision and charisma from south of the border will inspire voters here to seek out someone with depth and leadership vision. I think we usually end up with better (well, less dirty anyway) politicians than the Americans get with their system of only old-money, rich white guys. But some vision would be a nice change.