Politics with Pete

Stephen Harper: politician of the decade

If you’re anything like me, you must find Stephen Harper and his government detestable. You shouldn’t feel ashamed to admit it; there are a lot of us out there. Last I checked Mr. Harper was polling higher than he ever has in his federal career, and still a clear majority of Canadians would rather vote for the Liberals, the New Democrats, the Bloc or the Greens. Despite the number of Canadians who want nothing to do with the Harper Conservatives, they have governed for nearly four years and they are comfortably in the driver’s seat for the foreseeable future. For that reason, you can’t help but acknowledge Mr. Harper as the most outstanding Canadian politician of the last decade.

The job title ‘politician’ is one that abounds with negative stereotypes. Shamefully, many of them are true and best represented by the most recognizable faces in our elected leadership. To be a politician with name recognition almost always implies a career of superficial self-exposure, manipulation of public perceptions, and a generally opportunistic personality. People who make difficult decisions or stand up for principles, meanwhile, are discarded, because they alienate one interest group or another. Politicians have a greasy image because if they have stuck around long enough for us to learn their name, they have usually done so by refusing to lead. Leaders don’t get reelected.

We have a perfect example in Mr. Harper. What is Mr. Harper’s national vision? Well, he says he stands for helping Canadian families by cutting taxes and keeping criminals off the streets. It doesn’t really inspire me, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. There are still some major problems with it. First, cutting taxes means scaling back government spending. You don’t have to be an economist – that’s simple math. Our government went from running perennial budget surpluses to running a deficit under the Conservative watch. The reason was a failure of leadership. It’s easy to cut taxes, but it’s considerably more difficult to cut spending. By trying to take a shortcut to popularity, the Harper Conservatives dropped the ball completely.

Then there’s the tough on crime facade. Whether or not you think harsher sentencing actually deters criminal behaviour, let’s once again give Mr. Harper the benefit of the doubt. Where is the legislation? Most of it is sitting on a shelf. The Conservatives found bigger fish to fry this last fall by initiating the dismantling the long gun registry. It had nothing to do with the law and order society that Mr. Harper has preached and everything to do with grabbing rural votes.

Don’t get your hopes up for the tough on crime initiatives to go anywhere any time soon, either. If you’ve been following your political news at all over the holidays you may have heard that Mr. Harper has once again prorogued parliament. But it is just that kind of dialogue closing, progress stifling move that makes Mr. Harper the undisputed politician of the decade. With his second prorogation as inspiration, I would have had no trouble writing a lengthy column on what a dick our Prime Minister is, but it would have missed the point and invited a slew of uncharacteristically perceptive comebacks from the partisan hacks who defend him. Because honestly, if Mr. Harper is such a dick, why can’t the opposition defeat him? That is also simple math and it isn’t adding up.

Proroguing parliament doesn’t really bother Canadians because we don’t really pay attention whether parliament is in session or not. Most of us would rather not hear about any of it. Never is this more apparent than election time when our leaders are somehow able to leave behind their pathetic records of inaction and shameless politicking and run campaigns on vague promises and empty slogans. Nobody was paying attention so nobody really knows if the promises can be believed or what they’re even supposed to mean. Mr. Harper has been very wise to notice this disinterested trend in Canadian political culture. He has exploited it by muzzling his ministers and unleashing his political attack machine on his critics. He has done such a good job of closing the doors on popular participation and scrutiny that no one even bothers to get upset when he officially cancels the meeting of our elected representatives.

We’ve already prorogued government ourselves. Capitalizing on the opportunity to make it official for us makes Mr. Harper the Canadian politician of the decade.