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COMMENTARY
November 9, 2011
Tea leaves
Appearances can be deceptive - perhaps that is my motto - and the unprecedented landslide of the Saskatchewan Party, in the provincial election Monday, well beyond the expectations of the political experts, suggests the groundwork under Canadian politics is not as commonly understood. And the trend descried, towards a "rejuvenated" NDP through the last federal election, may now have been exposed as flash-in-pan.More: the NDP may be doomed by the nature of its recent successes, and we'll have Liberals back by a process of default. And I say this even though, at less than one per cent, the Liberals' showing in the Saskatchewan election suggests extinction. For appearances can be deceptive; and besides, the reduction of the Saskatchewan race to two horses (Sask versus NDP) may be the indicator. It will be whichever two horses best represent the left and right hemispheres of the electoral brain, with the middle gone missing. (Along, we might argue, with a number of the necessary synapses.) Each province has its own history, its own economic realities, its own current issues and political personalities. This accounts for the very existence of the Sask party, founded in an effective merger between the living parts of the old Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. It was only the Liberals' dead tissue that was still running, somewhere behind the Greens, who themselves got nowhere. Of course, one might read too much into a provincial election result. But these are the tea leaves in the cup at this moment, and let's see what they say. Here is a fiscally, and to some degree socially, conservative party, with a classic rural base, now successfully invading the cities. And doing so, not by watering its platform down, or adopting a few "urbane" postures, but by stressing the very points that made it popular in the outback. And in Brad Wall, the bespectacled Saskatchewan Party leader, we have a man who has not cultivated, let alone acquired, the conventional political charisma. He is a municipal type from Swift Current, with amateur interests in country music and model rocketry, which may contribute to his mildly populist flavour. The reputation he has acquired is for candour. He has freely and quickly admitted to every stupid move of his career, on which he has been called - from using an exaggerated Ukrainian accent to mock former premier Roy Romanow, to drinking government-paid liquor in an earlier department job. This is important. As we see in the case of Herman Cain, in the U.S., and in many other recent cases, the "progressive" media and political operators of most stripes increasingly depend on personal smears to eliminate what they consider their most dangerous ideological opponents. Do not present yourself as a whited sepulchre, and they can't get you. Wall has also been steadfast, to the point of tedium, on "fiscal responsibility." The most effective argument against the latest "hope and change" proposals, from a party like the NDP, is to spell out what it will cost and why we can't afford it. It would be nice from, say, my own point of view, if the electorate were listening to such arguments as, "the proposals are intrinsically wrong; they create real divisions in society, dock freedom, and entail the creation of large new bureaucracies, with arbitrary powers, thus creating huge new opportunities for malice and corruption." Leave that to people like me to say; a politician must reduce this to, "we just can't afford it." And not only now, but through the foreseeable future, this argument will resonate. For there is no part of the Western world not out on a long fiscal limb, both publicly and privately; and everybody knows it. The hard accountant's stare is especially effective when an Opposition, like the current federal NDP, is replete with the young and starry-eyed. And if they turn for inspiration to the "Occupy" brigades, hooo, will they be slaughtered in the polls. Moreover, now that the Obama phenomenon has passed through America's system, there is no charismatic alternative in sight, capable of leading any electorate on another tax-borrow-and-spend bender. (Which means, watch out for charisma on the Right. My own paradoxical fear at the moment is the emergence of politicians who can articulate a neo-fascist agenda, inviting people to turn to government for centralized discipline and regulatory order, by scapegoating "the moneylenders" and other easily demonized targets, plus picking on minorities; thus preying on the same insecurities and envies the Left preyed upon to extend the Nanny State.) The NDP's recent success in Quebec has saddled them with twin catastrophic liabilities. They cannot champion Quebec regional interests without sacrificing their hold in English Canada. And they cannot play national issues, without sacrificing their hold in Quebec. They go the way of the Bloc, or the way of Social Credit, or perhaps most likely, both. That under these circumstances, Liberals even dream of merging with them, makes my day. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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