One current of Liberal thought has it that the best way for the party to prepare for the future is to let Stephen Harper rule during the worst days of the economic crisis. Then the Liberal Party can ride to victory in the next election.
Michael Ignatieff seems to be contemplating playing Mackenzie King to Stephen Harper’s R.B. Bennett. His "coalition if necessary, but not necessarily coalition" remark on the weekend certainly points in that direction.
The luckiest thing ever to happen to the Liberal Party was for it to be out of office for the half decade from 1930 to 1935. If Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King had not listened to the advice of a soothsayer, he might well have called the federal election earlier than the summer of 1930 and won. But he lost. That left R.B. Bennett and the Conservatives to govern during the most terrible time in the history of Canada.
The Conservative Prime Minister earned the moniker "Iron Heel" Bennett due to his savage repression of those out of work, and his indifference to the farmers of the prairies who burned the wheat they grew to heat their homes because they couldn’t sell it, and the farmers who were victims of the catastrophe of the "dust bowl".
By the time of the next federal election in 1935, two new political parties, destined to remain on the scene for decades had been created, the social democratic CCF and the right-wing Social Credit (the grand-daddy of today’s Conservative Party). But another party, the Reconstruction Party, not destined to endure, was created as a breakaway from the Conservatives. Under the leadership of former Bennett cabinet minister, H.H. Stevens, the Reconstruction Party captured eight per cent of the national vote but won only one seat.
With 45 per cent of the vote, Mackenzie King’s Liberals took 173 seats out of a total of 245, reducing the Conservative to 40 seats and 30 per cent of the vote. In the multi-party field WLMK won a sweeping victory, and the Liberals went on from there to hold power, with majority governments for the next twenty-two years. Had the Liberals been in power from 1930 to 1935, considering that their economic ideas were as boneheaded as those of the Tories, the slogan out of the Depression would likely have been—"Liberal times are bad times." And during their half decade on the opposition benches, WLMK and his friends learned next to nothing about how to manage the economy more intelligently. They were only saved from going down in history as a dinosaur government by the outbreak of the Second World War, which bestowed on them the reputation of being sound economic managers.
If Michael Ignatieff plans to follow in the footsteps of Mackenzie King if he is anointed Liberal leader (permanent or interim) on Wednesday, he’d be wise to reconsider. The only way the Liberals can sit out the recession on the opposition benches is to vote for Stephen Harper’s budget when parliament resumes. The NDP and the Bloc are sure as hell not going to do that. If Ignatieff’s idea of leadership is to provide confidence for the Harper government as his first act, he could be dooming himself to a short and unhappy career at the helm.
The Liberals would then wear the Harper record on the economy as their record. And while the Conservatives are bound to include some stimulus measures in the budget, there is no way that Harper and Flaherty are going to propose the overhaul of the Canadian economy based on very extensive public investments. And that is what the country needs.
Much though Ignatieff may wish to avoid it, he faces a clear choice. If he keeps Harper in power, it will be Harper who will hold the strong hand. He will determine the date of the next election, and he could well go on to win it. Meanwhile, the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens will feel deeply betrayed if Ignatieff dumps the coalition and allows Harper to remain in power.
At a date, not of his choosing, Ignatieff would go on to face the electorate, squeezed between the Conservative base vote on the one hand and the one third of the electorate already inclined to support parties other than the Liberals and the Conservatives on the other.
For Ignatieff, the WLMK option is a chimera. "A friend to all is a friend to none," Ignatieff could say if he comes to his senses, that is if Aristotle hadn’t already said it.
To date, Bob Rae is showing a much clearer understanding of the lay of the political land than is his former roommate.
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