For once, Tom Flanagan got it right.
The University of Calgary professor and former close advisor to the prime minister, who was cast out of the House of Harper for daring to write an insufficiently authorized Harperista hagiography, is reported by Postmedia News to have said yesterday that the prime minister’s campaign is too negative. D’ya think?
The prime minister should mix a little good news in with all the bad, Flanagan said, according to the Postmedia report — which, uncharacteristically, never quoted Flanagan’s actual words, which makes one wonder if the learned neo-con professor is now communicating through a Ouija board, or by stomping his feet to indicate yes and no.
More likely, it’s just too dangerous to actually be quoted saying anything you can’t deny later about this vindictive and angry prime minister.
But what good news is there?
That’s the problem. This prime minister just isn’t a good news kind of guy. Yes, he’s smart. Indeed, he’s ruthless. He has top advisers who give him good advice on how to run his campaigns. When he takes their orders, he does remarkably well for a driven loner without a likeable bone in his body.
But he just hates his enemies, particularly the Liberals, too much — and it shows through and makes Canadians feel hinky about the guy. And he’s too determined to hang onto power and implement his agenda no matter what, which makes voters wonder what his agenda might be. Surely this is what’s mired him in minority governments up to now.
In Harperland, Globe and Mail journalist Lawrence Martin quotes Flanagan as observing of Harper: “His first reaction to anything new is almost always negative. It’s a personality trait.”
Canadians know this, even without the PM’s erstwhile pal to tell them, and they just don’t trust Stephen Harper because of it. Nothing Flanagan says can change this — even if Harper still trusted him, which apparently he doesn’t.
But don’t take too much comfort from this, because Harper was also right yesterday when he was quoted in the same story opining that “people are tired of unnecessary elections. … Canadians don’t want another round of instability, another round of elections.”
This may not be strictly true in an objective sense — you could make a pretty good case Canadians get better government from minorities than the alternative, no matter who is in the driver’s seat. But it is true — if what we hear from our friends, families and co-workers reflects the views of larger numbers of Canadians — that lots of folks have been persuaded it is so.
They’d like a little stability, and they’re more than a little annoyed at the number of elections we’ve been having. Most often, people who express this view complain about the cost of elections — but what they’re really talking about is the uncertainty about what’s going to happen next. This is what Harper has correctly identified as key to his sales pitch.
So, as so often happens in an election, voters are wrestling with contradictory impulses. If they conclude they really don’t like or trust Harper and take his negativity as evidence, they won’t vote for him.
But if Harper can keep his negativity in check, and keep a smile on his grim visage for a few more days, maybe enough Canadians can be fooled that they’ll vote for “stability.” They’ll get anything but, of course, but after four elections in seven years that may be what it takes for Harper to fool enough Canadians to get his majority on May 2.
As a hockey fan, then, even Harper would appreciate the need for the opposition to play a rough game, with lots of hard checks against the boards, if they’re going to beat him this time, or even just hold him to another minority.
It’s all very well to say the opposition should offer positive alternatives, but the harsh reality is they’re more likely to win by nailing him on his real vulnerabilities, and goading him into showing the real Stephen Harper. That is, the Stephen Harper from whom there is no good news to temper the negativity and never will be.
That’s why the Conservatives ran dirty ads early about the more likeable Liberal Leader, Michael Ignatieff, and his family — they needed to sow enough doubt about him to overcome the personality deficit their man brought to the game. Those ads were designed, as they say in political advertising, to blunt Ignatieff’s net favourables.
And that’s why Ignatieff’s positive campaign so far, while it includes some engaging ideas, lacks what it takes to win.
Jack Layton and the New Democrats are on a better track with their tough emphasis on health care, a real vulnerability for Harper, whom everyone in Canada knows in their hearts would love to destroy our system of public health care.
It comes down to this, distasteful as it may seem: The opposition parties must match Harper’s ruthlessness, even his hatred for opponents, if they want to save the country from a Harper majority. If they need to leave a little Tory blood on the ice, metaphorically speaking, then so be it. There are no penalties for roughing in politics.
And if they just can’t bring themselves to do that, then we Canadians need leaders who can. After all, this isn’t just a game.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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