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COMMENTARY
February 11, 2012
Quietude in politics
Let me provide one good reason Stephen Harper is our prime minister, and promises to be, by the standards of electoral politics, an immortal. He doesn't say much.The very frustration journalists have expressed, about what we perceive as a lack of candour, is his strength. Having watched the guy, I'm persuaded that he is more candid than any of his last nine predecessors, going back to the last one I sort-of liked, "Uncle Louis" St-Laurent. Which is to say, not very candid, but he'd rather shut up than lie. In Italy, the comparative success of Mario Monti - an unelected technocrat ruling an unelected cabinet, but still reporting to the country's Assembly and Senate, and requiring their votes of confidence - is, for a leader administering very sour fiscal medicine, remarkably popular. Enthusiasm there is none, he will never be a rock star, but after Silvio Berlusconi I sense, from this distance, a kind of popular relief, that the country has a break from "mentecaptocracy" - my proposed weird pseudo-Ciceronian hybrid for "government by the insane." Angela Merkel is likewise worth contemplating here. I, personally, would give her mixed reviews at best, were I a German pundit required to have opinions. As a Canadian I would give Harper mixed reviews. In Merkel's case, I seriously doubt that she is mistress of cause and effect, that her very Prussian emphasis on balancing the books, regardless of consequences, shows a real understanding of the euro crisis she and her colleagues are trying to contain. But she is not crazy, and her gritty persistence through perpetual crisis has earned some grudging respect, even at home. (Most, if not all politicians, are more popular abroad.) She has the air not of "great leader," but of cabinet secretary, authoritatively summarizing the conclusions from a sensible discussion, held entirely off-camera. (Note: cabinet secretaries are usually male; that was not meant as a tilt at her sex.) Wandering farther afield, I can think of several prominent Asian politicians who were relatively sensible and self-effacing, but none who has survived. Harper of Canada is lucky, because the ground was prepared for him by Liberal administrations that had tired of "pushing envelopes" (see my column tomorrow). Jean Chrétien, whom I detest less in retrospect than when he was in power, was a conventional ward-heeler, but also an intelligently reactive mild-left politician, which is to say, fairly good at anticipating trouble and trying to head it off. One might not agree with his more proactive policies, but one can now see the problem each was trying to address.(And I worship "prudence.") Politically, of course, a certain background dullness is an advantage in shaping any regime in which dullness will prevail. It is genuinely hard for a politician to stay out of the news, when he is compelled to reverse, sharply, his predecessor's most dramatic policies, now fuelled by all the vested interests that were aroused to feed. Whereas, Italy's Monti cannot last long, because he is in that unhappy position of trying to bottle an escaped genie, a hard thing to do even with the best intentions. (It usually requires several political generations.) And the next president of the United States will be in the same, can't-win, situation. (Unless Obama succeeds himself, which will be a plain catastrophe.) This, I think, goes some distance to explain the Republican hesitation to choose a man like Rick Santorum from their field of variously flawed candidates for president. To a "normal" conservative, if we might try to imagine such a thing - both "socially" and "fiscally" conservative, but gradualist - the choice of such a man would be slam-dunk (given the field). Newt Gingrich is too wild and smart and stuffed with half-baked ideas. Mitt Romney should be in the running for treasury secretary at best: a robotic turnaround specialist who needs a carefully perimetered assignment. Ron Paul is even more the single-issue whacko. But Santorum is a nearly perfect anti-Obama. He is articulate without being even slightly charismatic, personally and directly well-informed, transparently honest, and humble in character, yet intensely competitive. He has breadth of interest and attention, confidently balancing foreign and domestic priorities. He eschews gimmick proposals. His record and rhetoric alike bespeak consistency to values which are, or were, normative on this continent. He has never actually run anything big, a serious flaw that was shared by Barack Obama when he came to the Oval Office. Yet, unlike Obama, he has a history of seeking the best available result, instead of skulking with agendas and abstractions. He is a political player and deal-maker, not the sort of ideologue who empowers "czars." Yet, my sense is that Santorum's remarkable virtues cannot be appreciated in the present electoral cycle, because passions have been so much engaged. And this is quite germane to the mess the U.S. is in: politics in the fog of Culture War. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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