Oh, what a tizzy it is in our little capital of Fantasyland
JEFFREY SIMPSON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
February 8, 2008 at 7:02 PM EST
A reasonable, sensible compromise can be found on extending the Canadian mission in Afghanistan if the Liberal Party wants one.
It is hard to fathom, of course, what the Liberal Party wants on Afghanistan, or on many other issues. It is even harder to fathom why Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and some of his more boisterous MPs are pawing the ground for an election they are most likely to lose.
Ottawa, the country's little capital, is convulsed these days with election speculation, tactics, rumours and all the other irrelevancies of the media/political world that divorce it from the rest of the country.
Some of this speculation swirls around the Afghan mission. The Harper government laid down a motion yesterday to extend that mission's life to the “end of 2011,” with more targeted aid, but assuming 1,000 or so troops from another country and better equipment – essentially the position recommended by the five-person panel led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley.
This is a position many Liberals could accept, with some tweaking such as the mission's end date being advanced to early 2011. But Mr. Dion continues to draw the proverbial line in the sand about no combat deployment after February of 2009. On this, or a Liberal vote against the budget, the Harper government could fall, which seems to be what the Harperites want, too.
The little capital, therefore, has once again become a kind of political Fantasyland. Both the Liberals and Conservatives are giving themselves less and less room to manoeuvre. Both parties are insisting the other is intransigent. Both are convinced they can win the election: the Liberals with a minority, the Conservatives with a majority. But both have no assurances they are right. And if they are wrong, as is quite likely, the consequences will be bad for both.
The Liberal positioning is mostly about the party's lack of coherence and, more important, total lack of confidence in its leader. Mr. Dion has almost no caucus support, and he must know it. His standing in public opinion polls is low, especially but not exclusively in Quebec. He is living on the Liberal brand name, not his own.
So, like leaders before him who felt themselves mocked by others, Mr. Dion tends to take fixed, non-negotiable positions to show everyone how strong he really is. But it is a phony, misguided strength that illustrates weakness. It is also part of his (and many other Liberals') fear of the NDP that causes the Liberals to forget time and again that elections are won and lost in the centre of the political spectrum, not on the extremes.
For those with better things to do than follow the minutiae of politics, it might seem incredible that this be so, but there are Liberals who fully expect to lose the election – indeed, want to lose the election, and as soon as possible – so they can then replace their leader as quickly as possible.
Therefore, and this is part of the little capital's Fantasyland, one element of the Official Opposition seeks an election it expects and wants to lose. Another element believes an early election is imperative because the leader, and thus the party, has talked itself into positions from which no retreat is possible without humiliation – which is what happens when so many lines in the sand are drawn. A few, and the hubristic leader is one, apparently believe the Liberals will win office.
The Harperites, with more money and confidence, will take an election if necessary but not necessarily an election. They are obviously better prepared and organized for one than the Liberals, but there is no guarantee they can secure their coveted majority.
They have controlled the agenda for two years, focused their message, bribed and wooed Quebec, stroked ethnic groups, fulfilled many of their campaign promises except those they broke, gagged and muffled their own troops, given away money such that the federal cupboard is almost bare, engaged in egregious public policies such as the GST tax cut to curry favour, yet been unable to move their numbers into majority government territory.
They are apparently convinced that a majority can be found in the “underlying factors”: their leader's greater campaigning experience, his higher popularity compared with that of Mr. Dion, the possibility of gains in rural and small-town Quebec that will then impress Ontario and the Maritimes, and a superior, cutting-edge political machine.
The Conservatives also have a more plausible position on Afghanistan than the Liberals. Moreover, if one party believes in extending the mission with certain drop-dead conditions, and three parties (Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois) do not, and if the electorate is more or less evenly divided, you want to be the only party that represents the view of half the electorate, and let the other three fight for the other half.
Anyway, such is the swirl in the little capital that an election few Canadians desire, and that neither large party can be sure will produce what it wants, has everyone in a tizzy from which, if cooler heads prevail, reality might still intervene.
